VOL. VIII ] BLAKENEY POINT TEENEKY. 263 



The average number of a clutch is three. 



Tlie first young begin to fly usually during the second 

 week of July, but a few are always earlier. 



Reference was made in the February issue of the 

 current volume {antea, p. 222) to the high mortality of 

 the young Terns on Blakeney Point in 1913. Doubt was 

 thrown on the statement that its cause was the absence 

 of whitebait. I was on the grounds that season during 

 the first fortnight of July and could find no support, 

 in the face of local opinion, for the starvation theory, 

 i.e. starvation through the lack of whitebait. What 

 the situation was before July I am not competent 

 to state. But all the young birds alive then were either 

 a couple of days old or younger, or else nearly able to 

 fly. Intermediate stages were almost entirely absent, 

 so that earlier in the season there was food. Now shoals 

 of fry, which were evidently there at the beginning 

 of the season, having once come up to the shelter of 

 Blakeney Point would not desert it again. But sup- 

 posing they had, the first hatched birds would have died 

 of starvation with the younger. Yet they were ahve 

 in July. Something happened then in the middle 

 of June which killed off the newly-hatched but not the 

 older birds. Throughout the first half of July, dead 

 cliicks and deserted eggs were met with at every turn. 

 At one point we roughly made a circle of about forty 

 yards diameter and collected the dead birds therein. 

 We found over 40 ! All had died soon after hatching, 

 though they were in various stages of decomposition. 

 But what struck one as curious, after hearing local 

 rumours, was that those birds which came in with food 

 were not only numerous but were not attacked by the 

 other birds, as they -would have been had supplies been 

 scarce. Moreover, on walking across the ground one 

 found sand-eels and whitebait lying about among the 

 dead nesthngs. 



The weather was rather fine that summer, but even 

 then it was a surprise to me to see several parties of 



