2G4 SOOTY TERN. 



ous channels leading to the small havbour, where we anchored. As the 

 chain grated the ear, I saw a cloud-like mass arise over the " Bird Key," 

 from which we were only a few hundred yards distant ; and in a few 

 minutes the yawl was carrying myself and my assistant ashore. On land- 

 ing, I felt for a moment as if the birds would raise me from the ground, 

 so thick were they all round, and so quick the motion of their wings. 

 Their cries were indeed deafening, yet not more than half of them took 

 to wing on our arrival, those which rose being chiefly male birds, as we 

 afterwards ascertained. We ran across the naked beach, and as we en- 

 tered the thick cover before us, and spread in different directions, we 

 might at every step have caught a sitting bird, or one scrambling through 

 the bushes to escape from us. Some of the sailors, who had more than 

 once been there before, had provided themselves with sticks, with which 

 they knocked down the birds as they flew thick around and over them. 

 In less than half an hour, more than a hundred Terns lay dead in a heap, 

 and a number of baskets were filled to the brim with eggs. We then re- 

 turned on board, and declined disturbing the rest any more that night. 

 My assistant, Mr H. Ward, of London, skinned upwards of fifty spe- 

 cimens, aided by Captain Day''s servant. The sailors told me that the 

 birds were excellent eating, but on this point I cannot say much in cor- 

 roboration of their opinion, although I can safely recommend the eggs, 

 for I considered them delicious, in whatever way cooked, and during our 

 stay at the Tortugas we never passed a day without providing ourselves 

 with a good quantity of them. 



The next morning Mr Ward told me that great numbers of the 

 Terns left their island at two ©"'clock, flew off towards the sea, and re- 

 turned a little before day, or about four o'clock. This I afterwards ob- 

 served to be regularly the case, unless there happened to blow a gale, a 

 proof that this species sees as well during the night as by day, when they 

 also go to sea in search of food for themselves and their young. In this 

 respect they differ from the Sterna stolida, which, when overtaken at sea 

 by darkness, even when land is only a few miles distant, alight on the 

 water, and frequently on the yards of vessels, where if undisturbed they 

 sleep until the return of day. It is from this circumstance that they have 

 obtained the name of Noddy, to which in fact they are much better en- 

 titled than the present species, which has also been so named, but of 

 which I never observed any to alight on a vessel in which I was for 

 thirty-five days in the Gulf of Mexico, at a time when that bird was as 



