AND NEIGHBOURHOOD. 231 



birds may always be recognized by the shorter tarsus, 

 and by the narrowness of the dark line which runs 

 along the shaft on the inner webs of the primaries. 

 This line is both darker and much more extensive in 

 the Common Tern," The present species appears irre- 

 gularly on our coasts during the double migration, but, 

 with the exception of the Scilly Isles, is not known 

 to breed regularly to the south of the Humber. 



203. LESSER or LITTLE TERN. 



Sterna niinuta. 



This very beautiful little bird, although by no 

 means an uncommon summer visitor to many parts of 

 our coasts, does not, as far as I am aware, very 

 frequently wander far inland in this country, and 

 I have only two positive records of its occurrence 

 in the Nen valley; the first of these refers to a 

 solitary specimen that flew past us within ten yards 

 as we were fishing from a boat at a short distance 

 below^ Lilford during the last week of July 1872, 

 and the second to a specimen shot from a party of 

 four near Wansford Station in the late summer of 

 1876, stufied by Holeywell of Peterborough, and 

 now in my collection ; both these specimens were in 

 full adult plumage. The present species frequents 

 the same sort of localities as the Common Tern, and, 

 except in its extraordinary fearlessness of man, very 

 much resembles that species in its habits. I never, 

 however, met wdth this bird in large colonies at its 

 breeding-quarters, and on the expanse of sandy coast 

 of from four to five miles in extent, where I first 

 made its intimate acquaintance, I found that two or 



