4i8 



The Living Animals of the World 



Young puffins, like young auks and guillemots, are hatched covered with long down. The 

 parents feed them on fish, which they deposit at the mouth of the burrow twenty at a time, 

 and give them to the young bird one by one. When the female is sitting, her mate feeds 

 her in a similar way. 



Puffins lay only a single egg, wliich differs from that of its relatives the Auks and Guillemots 

 in being white. The white colour enables the sitting-bird to see it in the dark burrow. 



THE GULL TRIBE. 



To get at the real inwardness of the Gull Tribe, so to speak, we must examine their 

 anatomy very closely; then we shall be convinced that they are modified Plovers, and have 

 nothing to do with the Petrels, to 

 which they bear an undoubted re- 

 semblance. ; 



Terns. i 



A 



Terns are gulls in miniature, on 

 which account it is probable that 

 many a visitor to the seashore passes 

 them unwittingly. But let him 

 watch next time for what look like 

 flocks of tiny, long-winged, and un- 

 usually active gulls, now hovering 

 gracefully in the air, and now suddenly 

 plunging headlong like an arrow to 

 the sea, with a force and dash that 

 will surprise him, now that attention 

 is drawn to them. These are terns. 

 From their vivacity and forked tails, 

 they have been aptly named Sea- 

 swallows. 



There are several sjiecies of tern. 

 Like the Gulls, they have a dis- 

 tinctive dress for summer and winter, 

 but the sexes are both dressed alike. 

 The general livery, as with the Gulls, 

 is pearly grey above and pure white 

 below — in summer, in some species, 

 relieved by a black head. One 

 species, the Roseate Tern, has the 

 breast suffused with a most exquisite 

 rose-pink, which fades rapidly after 

 death, however. Young terns, in their 

 first plumage, differ consj^icuously from their parents, having much brown intermixed with gre}'. 



Terns lay about three eggs, which are deposited among the shingle on the beach ; and 

 so closely do the eggs, and later on the young, resemble the surrounding stones that it is 

 almost impossible to find them. As a rule terns breed in colonies, often numbering many 

 thousand birds. 



There are exceptions to the rule just laid down as to nest-building. One species of the 

 Noddy Terns, for example, builds a nest of turf and dry grass, placed in bushes or in low 

 trees. It seems to return to the same nest year after year, adding on each return new 

 materials, till they form masses nearly 2 feet in height. Occasionally it appears to iirake a 

 inud-ne.st, jjlaced in the fork of a tree ; whilst the superb little White Noddy often deposits 



P\,<,lo hy G. 



{Chcsh. 



TERNS ON A SHINGLE BANK. 



Tems lay their egg.s anioTig the «liingle ; from tbair coloration, these are dilliciilt to 



detect among the surrouDding stones. 



