18 British Birds, with their Nests and Eggs. 



adult summer garb; the forehead and under side are white; the crown and the 

 nape of the neck mottled with black; the feathers of the shoulders, the inner 

 secondaries, the tips of the wing-coverts and of the tail brown, with pale margins ; 

 bill and feet reddish-brown. The adults in winter differ from the immature birds 

 here described, by wanting the brown on the shoulders, wings and tail. 



The Whiskered Tern, in regard to its food and the manner of capturing it, 

 differs little from the other Marsh-Terns. It lives chiefly on insects, dragon-flies, 

 grasshoppers, etc., taken on the wing, and small fishes, frogs and newts pounced 

 upon in shallow water. 



Family— LARID&. Subfamily— S TERNIN^E. 



Gull-Billed Tern. 



Gelochelidon anglica, MONT. 



ALTHOUGH this Tern has never been but a rare visitant to Great Britain, 

 and is abundant on the Continent, it was, strange to say, first described 

 as a distinct species from a specimen shot in the county of Sussex, by that keen 

 and accurate naturalist, Colonel Montagu, who described it in 1813, in the Supple- 

 ment to his " Ornithological Dictionary," — the excellent and not unworthy forerunner 

 of that erudite compendium of Ornithology " The Dictionary of Birds," by Professor 

 Newton. It was at first considered to be a specimen of the Sandwich Tern — a 

 species which had been described for the first time by Latham, in 1785, from a 

 bird shot near Sandwich ; but Montagu's coming into possession of one of the 

 type specimens of that bird, given him by his friend Mr. Vaughan, to whom it 

 had been presented by Dr. Latham, and his placing the birds side by side, 

 occasioned " the fortunate discovery that a distinct species, apparently more 

 common [than the Sandwich Tern], has been erroneously considered to be that 



