280 Conlribiitions to the Ornithology of India, Sfc. 



the tips are vermillion ; legs and feet, greenish grey or greenish 

 fawn; claws, black; irides, brown; in younger, or perhaps 

 seasonally less advanced birds, the legs and feet are brownish 

 plumbeous; the webs, dusky; the bill, plumbeous dusky on 

 culmen and towards tip, and orange red at tip. 



Fkmiage. — The forehead and lores are pale greyish brown ;, 

 the cheeks, sides of the head, base of lower mandible, crown and 

 occiput, a pale, but somewhat less greyish brown ; traces of a 

 darker brown half collar- on the nape, which probably is more 

 developed in the breeding plumage ; chin, pure white ; throat 

 white, more or less mingled with pale brown ; neck all round 

 the whole mantle including the wing coverts, breast, and sides, 

 a dull, smoky, sooty bi-own, with here and there, especially on 

 the coverts, a slightly slaty tinge; axillaries and wing lining 

 similar, but darker and browner; the edge of the wing white ; the 

 abdomen, vent, flanks, tail, and upper and lower tail coverts, 

 pure white. Primaries black, conspicuously white tipped, and 

 the later ones with an irregular paler spot on one or both webs 

 not far above the tips; the secondaries very broadly white 

 tipped, blackish or dark brown on the outer webs, paler on the 

 inner ; the basal halves or more of their shafts white ; tlie tertiaries, 

 a sooty grey brown, more narrowly tipped white ; and paling 

 towards the tips. 



The young birds have the central tail feathers almost entirely 

 brown, the lateral feathers brown on the outer webs, and for the 

 terminal one-third to one-half of the inner webs ; the rest of 

 the inner webs, white, and all the feathers narrowly tipped 

 brownish white ; the neck and back, as well as the scapulars, 

 tertiaries, and covevts are a paler wood brown ; the two latter 

 more or less tipped with white, and both primaries and secon- 

 daries are paler colored than in the adults. 



The vast majority of the specimens which we obtained, 

 though in adult plumage in other respects, still exhibited traces 

 of a black band towards the tips of the tail feathers. Some have 

 the whole crown and occiput as pale as the lores, in some the 

 chin is mottled white and brown, and there is little or no white 

 about the throat. In some again the darker half collar on the 

 nape is strongly marked, in others it is barely traceable. 



982.— Sterna caspia. Tall. 



The Caspian tern, which is almost unknown in the North- Wes- 

 tern Provinces, Oudh, the Punjab, and Rajpootana, is occasionally 

 seen in the Indus after that river enters Sindh, and is very 

 common in all the larger lakes of the latter province. In the 

 Muncher lake I have counted more than fifty on the wing at 



