Recently published Ornithological Works. 139 



Beebe on the Yucatan Jay. 



[The Undescribed Juveual Plumage of the Yucatan Jav. J>y C. 

 William Beebe and Lee S. Croudal. Zoologica, New York, vol. i. 11)11, 

 pp. 153-156, 1 pl.J 



This paper contains a description of the various plumages 

 of some living specimens of the Yucatan Jay {Cissilopha 

 yucatanica), Avliicli are (or lately were) living in the 

 Zoological Park, New York. These changes are fully 

 described, and a coloured plate is added of one of them. 

 We do not quite understand why they are called " juveual'^ 

 and not " juvenile." 



Bickerton on the Terns. 



[The Home-life of the Terns or Sea-Swallows photographed and 

 described. 15y W. Bickerton, F.Z.S., M.B.O.U. Pp. 1-88, 82 plates. 

 London (Witherby) : 1912. 8vo. Price 6s.] 



This work forms one of Messrs. \Yitherby's '' Bird-lovers 

 Home-life Series/'' and deals with the live species of Terns 

 breeding in the British Islands — the Sandwich, Roseate, 

 Common, Arctic, and Lesser. All the matter is the result 

 of the personal observations of the author, who has spent 

 some five weeks in four different years at Ravenglass in 

 Cumberland, watching and photographing the Sandwich, 

 Common, and Lesser Terns, while his pictures of and notes 

 on the Roseate and Arctic Terns were secured on a group 

 of small rocky islets off the British coast, the exact position 

 of which Mr. Bickerton wisely withholds from his published 

 pages. 



At Ravengiass, owing to the strict rules imposed by Lord 

 Muncaster, to whom belongs the tract of sand-hills where the 

 Terns breed, there is every reason to hope that the Sandwich 

 Tern — the rarer species — is increasing, and Mr. Bickerton 

 gives a table of the numbers of eggs recorded by the keeper 

 as having increased from 120 in 1900 to 403 in 1912. 



Mr. Bickerton^s observations on the varying habits of 

 these species of Tern in regard to nesting-sites, nest-con- 

 struetion, sociability, and other psychological characters, are 

 ftdl of interest, and are told in a charming and direct 



