LARIDA, 655 
THE NODDY TERN. 
Anous stTé.ipus (Linneus). 
Two examples of this pelagic species are recorded by Wm. 
Thompson (Mag. Zool. & Bot. i. p. 549) as having been obtained 
between the Tuskar Lighthouse and the Bay of Dublin, about the 
year 1830, and one of these is in the Science and Art Museum of 
the above capital. Some later reports of birds which were 
“identified on the wing” as belonging to this species, either refer 
to the Arctic Skua or are unworthy of serious consideration. In 
‘The Zoologist,’ for 1897, p. 510, is a record of a specimen said to 
have been shot “on the Dee marshes about six years ago.” 
The Noddy is, like the Sooty Tern, of general distribution 
throughout the tropics ; some of its best known breeding-grounds 
being in the Tortugas group off the coast of Florida, the Bahamas, 
and many of the ‘Cays’ of the West Indies, as well as on both sides 
of Central America. In the Atlantic it was found by the ‘ Chal- 
lenger’ Expedition residing as far south as the storm-beaten Inac- 
cessible Island, off Tristan da Cunha; while in the Pacific it occurs 
from Mexico to the Galdpagos group. On the islands and coasts 
of Polynesia and Australia it is found breeding in most of the 
localities mentioned when treating of the Sooty Tern, though often 
slightly apart from that species ; and it occurs throughout the inter- 
tropical Asian and African seas, breeding in the Laccadives, the 
islands of the Red Sea, St. Helena, Ascension, and in other places. 
Contrary to the habit of typical Terns, this and most of the 
