312 THE TERN 



for eggs and birds so persistently, season after season, 

 that they have ceased to exist as breeding places. A few 

 hatch out in lonely shingle runs here and there on the 

 coast lines; others have changed their breeding grounds 

 for good. The ring-dotterels have suffered in the same 

 way, but, from their different nesting habits nothing 

 like so much as the terns have done. When dogs are 

 trained for egg hunting, and the capture of young birds 

 alive, without hurting them, is it to be wondered at if the 

 poor birds shift elsewhere ? The size of a place has 

 nothing to do with its nesting capacities ; if the condi- 

 tions are favourable, there the birds will come in their 

 seasons to settle down. If they are not interfered with 

 they will come again, until at last you may count on 

 their arrival almost to a day. One place I frequently 

 visit, where the birds, water-fowl and waders have been 

 protected for forty years, not by keepers or lookers, but 

 by the people that pass that way, because the owner of 

 a fine sheet of water desired that they might not be 

 frightened. This is as it should be, yet for all that they 

 are wild birds pure and simple, free to come and go 

 just as they please, according as their inclinations move 

 them."* 



The Common Tern is 14*25 inches in length but its- 

 long wings and tail make it appear larger. The legs are 

 red, the feet webbed. Beak red with a sharp point; 

 crown and nape quite black; mantle a fine bluish grey. 

 Throat and breast beautifully white ; wing feathers dark- 

 ish. Tail forked like that of the House Swallow. The 

 longest, outer side feathers, which form the fork, are 

 dark grey, the other tail feathers, and the rump white* 

 The eye reddish-brown. 



*"A Son of the Marshes." 



