ARCTIC TERN 317 



the charred wood and blackened earth. Like the redshank, it is, 

 when breeding, exceedingly vigilant and noisy when approached. 



Eight species, all rare stragglers, remain to be mentioned : the 

 broad-billed sandpiper, pectoral sandpiper, Bonaparte's sandpiper, 

 American stint, buff-breasted sandpiper, Bartram's sandpiper, red- 

 breasted snipe, and Esquimaux curlew. With the exception of the 

 first, which breeds in northern Europe and winters in Africa, these 

 are all American species, breeding in or near the arctic regions, and 

 migrating in autumn to South America, in some cases as far south 

 as Patagonia. 



Eoughly speaking, we may say that, of the thirty-four species of 

 the snipe family described in most ornithological works as ' British,' 

 seventeen or eighteen are breeders in or annual visitants to this 

 country; six are occasional visitors two or three of these are 

 perhaps, annual visitors, but in very small numbers ; and tho 

 remaining ten are all rare stragglers. 



Arctic Tern. 

 Sterna macrura. 



Bill blood-red ; legs and feet coral-red ; head and nape black ; 

 mantle pearl-grey ; rump and tail white ; under parts paler pearl- 

 grey. Length, fourteen and a half inches. 



The tern has been called a sea-swallow, and he is certainly 

 swallow-like in his slender figure, sharply forked tail, and aerial 

 habits ; but he is built on more graceful lines, with proportionately 

 longer wings, and in his white and pearl-grey plumage is the more 

 beautiful bird. The blood-red hue of the beak in the arctic tern 

 gives that touch of bright colour which adds so much to the beauty 

 of a species otherwise wholly black or white ; it intensifies a black 

 plumage, as we see in the blackbird and chough, and makes the 

 white plumage seem more immaculate in its whiteness. The flight 

 of the tern is unlike that of any other bird, whether of the sea or 

 land : it is more airy, and suited to the pale, slender, aerial figure ; 

 buoyant and slightly wavering, it reminds one a little of the high, 

 apparently uncertain, flight of some large-winged butterfly ; and it 

 is in perfect harmony, not only with the slimmer form, but with the 

 idea of a being whose life is passed amid wind and mist and fluctuat- 



