22 British Birds, with their Nests and Eggs 



seemed to be feeding chiefly on insects, of which there were quantities in the 

 neighbourhood of the breeding colonies. On the wing they were exceedingly 

 swift and elegant ; and their flight seems more powerful than that of most of the 

 smaller species of Terns. According to Von Heuglin this Tern feeds chiefly on 

 Orthoptera of all sorts and sizes, Libellulidce , Coleoptera and Lepidoptera, occasionally 

 also Mutillidce, which it catches with ease on the wing. When there is a prairie- 

 fire it is found there, with many other species of birds, darting into the dense 

 smoke in pursuit of locusts ; and it also catches young birds and small mammals, 

 and is often seen fishing amongst the surf. Mr. O. Salvin, who met with it in 

 Algeria, says that it feeds over the grass-fields and open land, hovering and 

 descending, as it does on an English coast over a shallow, its food being grass- 

 hoppers and beetles instead of sand-eels." Herr Gatke observes in the " Birds of 

 Heligoland," that " the great difference in the mode of life of this species from 

 that of its near congeners could not fail to attract the notice of the observant 

 Heligolander, and he has christened the bird accordingly [Lunn-kerr, or Land 

 Tern]. Any one who, day after day, has watched the Terns darting down into 

 the sea from great heights, so that the foam spurts high into the air, must feel 

 particularly impressed to see a bird so similar in appearance roving about over 

 the fields, suddenly dropping among the long stalks of the potatoes, and disap- 

 pearing from sight. Such, however, is the only way in which the bird seeks its 

 food on this island ; for it has never been seen fishing on the sea like the other 

 members of the genus." 



The note of this Tern in the breeding season has, by most of those ornith- 

 ologists who have had an opportunity of listening to it, been described as resembling 

 the " laugh " of the Gull, variously modulated, and, sounding doubtless differently 

 to different ears, it has been recorded by different phonetics. The recording of the 

 various notes of birds offers a large and interesting field to the ornithologist armed 

 with a phonograph. 



Mr. Darwin, who procured a specimen at Bahia Blanca, in Northern Patagonia, 

 says, " I may here observe that many navigators have supposed that Terns, when 

 met with out at sea, are a true indication of land. But these birds seem not 

 unfrequently to be lost in the open ocean ; thus one (Megalopterus stolidus) flew 

 on board the Beagle, in the Pacific, when several hundred miles from the Galapagos 

 Archipelago. No doubt, the remarks made by navigators, with respect to the 

 proximity of land where Terns are seen, refers to birds in a flock, fishing, or 

 otherwise shewing that they are familiar with that part of the sea. I, therefore, 

 more particularly mention that off the mouth of the Rio Negro, on the Patagonian 

 shore, I saw a flock [probably of this species] .... fishing seventy miles from 



