WATER BIRDS. 



Wilson's Stormy Petrel. 



Richardson's Jager. 



The Black-headed Gull, is common in most parts of America, and often seen, too, in the warmer regions 

 jf Europe, such as the coasts of Spain, Sicily and the Mediterranean isles. On this continent it is found 

 is far south, as Mexieo and Cayenne, but not far north of the United States boundaries. From their southern 

 winter retreat, they appear on the New Jersey coast in the closing days of April. Their noisy companies 

 now follow the fishermen for their garbage, now glean among the leavings of the tide, now gather worms 

 md insects in the marshes and ploughed fields, and sometimes even poach about the farm-house. They breed 

 in the New Jersey marshes, but are rarely seen in the north-east. They go southward early in autumn. 



Richardson's Jager, is twenty two inches in length, and the wings thirteen and a half inches long. It 

 breeds in latitude sixty-five degrees on barren grounds, at some distance from the coast. It feeds on shelly 

 mollusca, abounding in the small lakes of the far north and is a sore tormentor of the Gull genus. It is 

 occasionally found in the bays near Boston in the winter season. 



Wilson's Stormy Petrels are very interesting and innocent creatures, and yet through the ignorance and 

 superstition of sailors, it bears an evil reputation and sundry bad names, as Stormy Petrels, Devil Birds, 

 and Mother Carey's Chickens, it is supposed to involve in a storm the vessel it follows; no sooner is a ves- 

 sel off soundings, than flocks of these birds begin darting around it, and finally become its regular followers. 

 Its purpose is apparently to catch the mollusca tossed up by the surge, as also whatever is cast overboard. 



The Great or Common Tern is about fifteen inches long, and thirty inches across the extended wings. It 

 inhabits both continents. On the eastern it summers, and breeds in Greenland and Spitsbergen, as also in 

 the arctic shores of Siberia and Kamschatka, migrating in winter to the Mediterranean, Madeira and the Ca- 

 naries. In America it breeds along the coasts of the Middle and Northern States and on the sand-bars of 

 the Great Lakes. 



Tin- Great, or Common Tern. 



Black-headed Gull. 



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