166 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
the breeding season, stated that at least two hundred pairs nested 
in 1906, and his estimate was probably well within the mark, 
for, although by the 21st of June many of the young birds were 
able to fly and had left the sandhills for the shore, I counted 
during my stay one hundred and nine nests with eggs or newly- 
hatched young. The fact that there were any eggs at all at the 
end of the month is probably due to many of the earlier layings 
having been destroyed, for, in spite of efforts to protect the 
birds, numbers of eggs are undoubtedly taken by collectors, 
whose cupidity constitutes at once a breach of the law and an 
iil return for Lord Muneaster’s confidence in allowing access to 
the gullery. My friend Mr. J. J. Cash, who was at Ravenglass 
in May, tells me that the first eggs were seen on the 4th of that 
month, and that on the 9th he counted fifty from one spot. On 
June 21st and the two following days I saw a few young birds on 
the sandhills which were just able to fly, but I sought in vain for 
birds at this stage of growth on subsequent visits. These I took 
to be the latest hatched of the normal May layings; they left 
the dunes as soon as they could fly and frequented the beach, 
where other young ones a few days older than they were being 
tended by the old birds. On July 11th I went over the whole 
gullery with Mr. T. A. Coward ; on that date most of the belated 
eggs which I had seen in the fourth week of June were either 
hatched or chipped for hatching. There were two eggs in the 
majority of the nests that I examined, but a large minority had 
only one. On June 21st 1 saw two eggs and a newly-hatched 
bird in a nest, the only clutch of three that I came across, but 
this number is probably more common in the earlier layings. 
The Sandwich Terns breed in colonies of from five or six to 
fifty pairs or more. These colonies, often at some distance from 
one another, are chiefly in the southern part of the gullery, and 
most frequently on the dunes nearest to the sea or the Itt 
Estuary. The nests are never on the flat areas affected by the 
Common Terns, but on the slopes and more often on the very 
summits of the dunes. In such situations they are grouped 
within a few inches of one another, and are sometimes in close 
proximity to nests of the Black-headed Gull and Common Tern. 
The nests are never in thick herbage, as the Gulls’ nests often 
are, but are slight hollows in the sand among the sparse 
