230 THE BIRDS OF NORTHAMPTONSHIRE 



202. ARCTIC TERN. 



Sterna niaerura. 



The Rev. H. H. Slater, in a letter bearing the date 

 of November 28, 1885, informed me that he had 

 recently seen an adult specimen of this Tern in a 

 bird-stuffer's shop at Wellingborough, and was assured 

 that it had been killed in the previous month of 

 August near Sharnbrook, a village in Beds, within 

 three or four miles of our county frontier, and there- 

 fore well within my district ; this is the only instance 

 of the occurrence of the Arctic Tern in our neigh- 

 bourhood that has hitherto come to my knowledge, 

 though it is very probable that some of the many 

 " Terns " and " Sea-Swallows " reported to me without 

 special identification may have belonged to this 

 species. My personal acquaintance with the present 

 bird is so slight that I do not feel qualified to state 

 more with regard to it than that it is the most 

 abundant species of Tern throughout the extreme 

 north of our Islands and of the continent of Europe ; 

 in food and general habits it closely resembles the 

 Common Tern, but appears more exclusively to affect 

 salt-water than that species. To enable any of my 

 readers who are not acquainted with the principal 

 differences between this bird and the Common Tern 

 to distinguish one from the other, I quote from the 

 article on the present species in the 4th edition of 

 Yarrell: — "It is characterized by its more slender 

 form, longer tail-feathers, a coral-red bill without any 

 appreciable amount of black at the tip, very short 

 tarsi, and the french-grey of the underparts is as 

 dark as that of the back and wings. The young 



