222 Among the Birds in Northern Shires. 



about a week after this the first eggs are laid. The 

 laying season lasts a month, say from the middle of 

 May until the middle of June. The earliest young 

 may be remarked about the latter date, and from 

 that time onwards rapidly increase in numbers from 

 day to day. July is a busy month indeed for the 

 parent birds. In exceptionally early seasons some 

 of the young are able to fly by the beginning of 

 August, and by the end of the month the birds quit 

 the breeding-place, and finally desert the vicinity of 

 the islands during the first week in September. 

 Sometimes the autumn exodus is made, but the birds 

 return in a day or so and linger about the islands 

 before finally taking their departure south. The 

 Sandwich Terns do not always breed in exactly the 

 same spot every season. Sometimes an exception- 

 ally high spring-tide will wash away most of the eggs, 

 and then the poor birds move to another situation, 

 perhaps to another island, and try again. This 

 happened in the summer of 1883, and we saw the 

 beach literally strewn with broken egg-shells, the sole 

 remains of the wrecked colony. On our way from 

 the beach towards the barer rising ground in the 

 centre, where the main colony chances to be estab- 

 lished, we pass many outlying nests, not only of this 

 Tern, but of Gulls and Eiders. Birds are rising 

 from all parts of the ground, and gradually congre- 

 gating into a dense bewildering, drifting, noisy throng 



