SKIMMERS. 83 



to quote from Mr. William Brewster's excellent paper on the terns of the New Eng- 

 land coast, " upon its victim is performed with inimitable ease and grace. The bird 

 frequently disappears entirely beneath the surface, and occasionally even swims a 

 short distance under water before reappearing." His description of the scene when a 

 flock of terns have discovered a school of blue-fish is so animated and picturesque, 

 that I feel justified in quoting once more : " Dozens dash down at once, cleaving the 

 water like darts, and, rising again into the air, shake the salt spray from their feathers 

 by a single energetic movement, and make ready for a fresh plunge. Every bird 

 among them is screaming his shrillest, and the excitement waxes fast and furious. 

 Beneath, the blue-fish are making the water boil by their savage rushes, and there is 

 fun and profit for all save the unfortunate prey." 



Though a group of considerable homogeneity, the SterneaB comprise a few somewhat 

 outlying genera, as the noddies (Anous), dusky of color, and the white terns ( Gygis) 

 pure white all over, both forms with graduated or wedge-shaped tails. Both are trop- 

 ical, the latter especially inhabiting the islands of the South Atlantic and the Indian 

 Ocean, Polynesia, and Australia, while numbers of the former genus also occur in the 

 New "World, a single species (A. stolidus) even belonging to the fauna of the United 

 States. The genus (or rather super-genus) Sterna, includes about fifty species, 

 among them our common terns, but is divisible into several more or less well-defined 

 groups. Thus the bird represented in our cut (Sterna tschegrava or caspia), the 

 largest species, is the type of Thalasseus, while the smallest species for instance, our 

 /S. antillarum and the European S. minuta form the group Sternula. 



"We now come to a small group of Laroid birds, remarkable for their curious bill, 

 the lower mandible of which has been compared with a " short-handled pitchfork," 

 and for their long wings, viz., the skimmers, the Rhynchopina?, not less remarkable for 

 their peculiar habits and their geographical distribution, parts of America, Asia, and 

 Africa being inhabited by one species each. The American species (Rhynchops nigra), 

 the black skimmer, or shearwater, as it is also called, which occurs on our east 

 coast up to New Jersey, has found many excellent biographers and describers, from 

 whom we only make two selections. Our immortal Wilson thus describes this singular 

 bird : " The shearwater is formed for skimming, while on wing, the surface of the sea 

 for its food, which consists of small fish, shrimps, young fry, etc., whose usual 

 haunts are near the shore and towards the surface. That the lower mandible, when 

 dipped into and cleaving the water, might not retard the bird's way, it is thinned and 

 sharpened like the blade of a knife ; the upper mandible, being at such times elevated 

 above water, is curtailed in its length, as being less necessary, but tapering gradually 

 to a point, that, on shutting, it may offer less opposition. To prevent inconvenience 

 from the rushing of the water, the mouth is confined to the mere opening of the gul- 

 let, which indeed prevents mastication taking place there ; but the stomach, or gizzard, 

 to which this business is solely allotted, is of uncommon hardness, strength, and mus- 

 cularity; far surpassing, in these respects, any other water bird with which I am 

 acquainted. To all these is added a vast expansion of wing, to enable the 

 bird to sail with sufficient celerity while dipping in the water. The general 

 proportion of the length of our swiftest hawks and swallows to their breadth is as 

 one to two ; but in the present case, as there is not only the resistance of the air, but 

 also that of the water, to overcome, a still greater volume of wing is given, the shear- 

 water measuring nineteen inches in length, and upwards of forty-four in- extent. In 

 short, whoever has attentively examined this curious apparatus, and observed the pos- 



