The Common Tern 



and Newfoundland south to North Carolina, western Pennsylvania, islands in Lake 

 Erie, Manitoba, southern Saskatchewan, and Alberta. Not known to breed anywhere 

 west of the Rocky Mountains. Migrates abundantly in the interior east of the Rockies 

 and along the Atlantic seaboard; less commonly through Arizona and on the Pacific 

 Coast from British Columbia southward to Venezuela and Brazil. 



Occurrence in California. — Not common coastwise; sporadically (or briefly) 

 abundant. 



Authorities. — Heermann {Sterna hirnndo), Rep. Pac. R. R. Surv., vol. x., 

 1859, p. 75 (Sacramento Valley); Dwight, Auk, vol. xviii., 1901, p. 54 (plumage and 

 molt); Beck, Proc. Calif. Acad. Sci., ser. 4, vol. iii., 1910, p. 64 (off Monterey; migr.) ; 

 Willett, Pac. Coast Avifauna, no. 7, 1912, p. 16 (occurrence in s. Calif.). 



WHAT a piece of work is a Tern! how gentle in instinct! how un- 

 trammeled in discursion! in form and moving how elegant and admirable! 

 in action how like the swallow! in innocence how like the dove! the beauty 

 of the air! the paragon of sea-birds! 



Terns are the animating spirits of summer seas. Not bluff and 

 sturdy like the Gulls, they have little place in winter's storm, but when the 

 sun has re-established his dominion and only Zephyr pricks the caracoling 

 waves, then the blue-gray daintiness of the Tern is as necessary to the 

 scene as are the criss-cross mirrors of the amethystine sea. We hail with 

 delight the appearance in the offing of a busy, happy company of the 

 white-winged birds, weaving in the air by their incessant plyings a close- 

 meshed fisher-net, wherein many a luckless minnow is entangled. Soon a 

 lone straggler from out the company drifts shoreward, parting the air 

 with graceful wing, now pausing critically over a suspected fish, like some 

 pensive mosquito with his beak down-turned; now dropping with a splash 

 beneath the wave, or making a nimble catch at the surface without 

 wetting his plumage. Ever and anon the muffled undertone of the waves 

 is pierced by a weird and half-petulant cry, te-er te-erve, childish, plaintive, 

 yet somehow thrilling and exultant. And as the bird passes to rejoin 

 his companions, you find he has borne away your fancy evermore to hover 

 where blue skies laugh at blue waters, and innumerable wavelets trifle 

 with innumerable sunbeams. 



The occurrence of the Common Tern in California is still somewhat 

 shrouded in mystery. The older authorities knew nothing at all about 

 it. The first record appears to be that by Bishop, 1 of three specimens 

 taken by H. W. Marsden at Pacific Beach, Sept. 8, 12 and 15, 1904. 

 Yet Rollo H. Beck, 2 writing in 1910, finds it of common occurrence at 

 Monterey, and records 109 California specimens in the collection of the 

 Academy of Science. Willett 3 says it is probably a regular migrant 



•Condor, Vol. VII.. Sept. 1905. p. 141. 



2 Proc. Calif. Acad. Sci.. 4th series, Vol. III., p. 64. Sept. 17. 1910. 



3 Pac. Coast Avifauna, No. 7, p. 16. 



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