414 LAEID^. 



type oiA. ridgwayi on Socorro Island i^, where it was breeding. Grayson had formerly 

 noted that a Noddy replaced the Sooty Tern on the Eevillagigedo group of islands 

 {cf. Proc. Bost. Soc. Nat. Hist, xiv, p. 301). It is also doubtless this bird which Salvin 

 observed off the Pacific coast of Guatemala ''. Grayson found A. jpileaius breeding in 

 communities on the north end of Isabel Island, the nests being placed under over- 

 hanging rocks and quite inaccessible ^. 



Mr. Nelson noticed numbers of these Terns at sea between San Bias and the Tres 

 Marias Islands, off which a few were seen during May. The species was common at 

 the end of AprU on Isabel at the north-eastern point of the island. Here it inhabited 

 the rugged faces of the cliffs and rocks and was very tame. He writes : — " While 

 perched on the black lava-cliffe, their dark colour blended so closely with the 

 background that it was very difficult to distinguish them, even when within fair 

 gunshot. The day we left the island we visited their resting-place and fired a dozen 

 or more shots while they were on the rocks or flying about, but the noise of the reports 

 did not seem to give them much alarm. They would circle out a short distance, and, 

 after hovering for a few moments over their killed or wounded companions floating in 

 the water, would return to the same part of the cliff from which they had just been 

 started. They were not heard to utter any notes, and the silence with which they 

 would suddenly appear out of the cliff, and then return and vanish again in its gloomy 

 face, produced an uncanny effect." Mr. Nelson says that, when at sea, the Noddies 

 fly close along the surface of the waves with long graceful wing-strokes, their dark 

 colour and habit of keeping close to the water causing them on many occasions to be 

 mistaken for Petrels ^^. 



Mr. Anthony found this species breeding in abundance on a small rock about a mile 

 off the western end of Socorro Island. After several unsuccessful attempts, a landing 

 was made at the risk of life and limb, and a series of eggs obtained. The latter were 

 all laid on the bsire rock, without any attempt at nest-building, and were often placed 

 on protruding shelves but little wider than the egg, so that it was a mystery how they 

 escaped rolling off into the sea ^^. 



Three eggs from Socorro, sent to the British Museum by ^Mr. Anthony, are described 

 by Mr. Oates as remarkably pale in colour, the ground being white or very pale cream- 

 colour, with a cluster of rusty-brown spots or blotches at the large end. These brown 

 spots are almost entirely absent from the remainder of the egg, while the pale purple 

 underlying spots are more evenly distributed over the whole shell ^*. 



inCEANOUS. 



Mieranous, Saunders^ BuU. Brit. Orn. Club, iv. p. xix (1895) ; Cat. Birds Brit. Mus. xxv. p. 143 

 (1896). 



Mieranous embraces a small group of Noddy Terns which are of sombre plumage. 



