BIRDS OF THE UNITED STAIES. 
177 
Plate XXX. 
STERNA ANTILLARUM, (Less.) Coues. 
Least Tern. 
For diminutiveness of size, nimbleiiess and grace of action, this species 
stands alone among its kin, and has been very j^roperly likened in its 
movements to the sprightly, elfish Humming-bird. This comparison holds 
true in this latter particular, as those who have had the privilege of 
watching these Terns in their pleasurable aerial diversions can testify, but 
there is lacking that essentiality which makes the other seem, when flut- 
tering before a tulip, a mere materialized sylph from the land of dreams. 
Nothing can give the enthusiastic lover of Nature more true and 
unalloyed happiness than the study of our aquatic friend in his own loved 
haunts, and while in the delightful exercise of his volant powers. 
His majestic sailing through the pellucid atmosphere, whether for 
pleasure or game, the beautiful equipoise of body as on motionless wings 
he hangs suspended above the liquid abyss below, the sudden, impetuous, 
hawk-like plunge when some luckless sprat rises to view, and last, but not 
least, the easy manner with which he arrests his downward course and 
bounds aloft, must be seen to form an adequate conception of the wonder- 
ful powers of flight with which the least of all onr Terns is endowed. 
Although fond of the deep-blue sea, with its sad and never-ending 
monotone, and the dreary, almost barren waste of sands that line its tor- 
tuous, plantless shores, it is by no means an exclusive dweller by such 
haunts. Inspired by a love of adventure, and burning for new sights and 
forms of life, it quits the shadow of Neptune’s trident, and wends its way 
up the various water-courses that tend seaward, to quieter inland scenes. 
