298 ROSEATE TERN. 



dipping in this manner eight or ten times in succession, and each time 

 generally secured a small fish. Their food consisted of fishes, and a kind 

 of small molluscous animal which floats near the surface, and bears the 

 name of " sailor's button." Tliey usually kept in parties of from ten to 

 twenty, followed the shores of the sand-bars and keys, moving backwards 

 and forwards much in the manner of the Lesser Tern, and wherever a 

 shoal of small fish was found, there they would hover and dash headlong 

 at them for several minutes at a time. 



The wreckers informed me that this species returns regularly to these 

 islands each spring, about the 10th of April, and goes off southward early 

 in September. These birds, with their favourite companions the Sand- 

 wich Terns, habitually resorted to the sand-bars each day, to rest for an 

 hour or two. I have never seen them on any part of our middle or eastern 

 coast, and am of opinion that they rarely proceed farther eastward than 

 the Capes of Florida, and that they are more attached to the immediate 

 vicinity of the shores than the larger species, which more generally fly 

 out to some distance. The delicate and beautiful rosy tint of the breast 

 soon fades after death. Those specimens which were not skinned imme- 

 diately after being procured did not retain it for a week, and in none of 

 them was it perceptible, without separating the feathers, at the end of a 

 month. In winter it disappears, as well as the glossy black of the head. 

 The length of the outer tail-feathers varies considerably ; but I could per- 

 ceive no decided difference of size or colour in the sexes, although I thought 

 the females somewhat smaller than the males. 



Sterna Dougallii, Mont. Ornith. Diet. 



HiRONDELLE-DE-MER DouGALL, Sterna Dougallii, Temm. Man. d'Ornith. part ii. 



p. 738. 

 Roseate Tern, Nuttall, Manual, vol. ii. p. 278. 



Adult Male. Plate CCXL. 



Bill longer than the head, slender, tapering, compressed, nearly straight, 

 very acute. Upper mandible with the dorsal line slightly arched, the 

 ridge rather broad and convex at the base, narrow towards the end, the 

 sides convex, the edges sharp and inflected, the tip acute. Nasal groove 

 short, extended to one-third of the length of the bill, deflected towards 

 the edge ; nostrils basal, linear, direct, pervious. Lower mandible with 

 the angle extremely narrow, very acute, extending to a little beyond the 



