170 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
among the sandhills, one of about fifteen, the other two of per- — 
haps ten acres each. Here there were hundreds of nests on the 
short turf, often in close proximity to one another. On June 
22nd, the date of my first visit to these open plains, I found 
nests with one, two, or three eggs, the last number being the 
most usual. The eggs in the same nest generally, though not 
invariably, approximate in colour. The nests on the turf were 
fairly substantial structures of bents,* but on the tops of the 
dunes they were usually mere shallow depressions in the sand 
with a few bents laid across them, the eggs not necessarily being 
on these bents at all. When one invades their nesting-ground 
the birds fly overhead, calling plaintively ‘“‘pierre’’ and ‘‘ pee- 
rah,” but they never dash down at the intruder’s head as the 
Sandwich Terns do. The brooding birds rise from their nests 
and join their clamorous fellows ; they do not fly in an ordered 
flock, but drift to and fro at varying heights, each on its 
own course, the crowd being always densest just over the in- 
truder, and they settle down again on the nests as soon as he 
passes on. 
On June 28th I saw the first young one, in a nest with two 
unhatched eggs. By July 5th most of the eggs were hatched. 
They are hatched, apparently, at intervals, for in many instances 
I noticed a discrepancy in the size of the young, and in others 
that one young bird had been hatched whilst one or two eggs 
still remained in the nest unchipped. The young leave the nest 
soon after they are hatched, and squat on the turf or in the 
grass close by, but even when the nests were on the bare sand- 
hills | never saw any attempt on their part to hollow out a little 
bed such as the young Sandwich makes, though, it is true, I did 
not see any Common Terns of the same age as the Sandwich 
Terns which made the deepest excavations. 
The nestling Common Tern is clothed in soft down, golden- 
brown, spotted and streaked with black on the dorsal surface, 
pure white beneath ; the chin and sides of face below the bill 
are sooty-black ; legs and feet pink; bill pink, with a brownish- 
black tip, at the extremity of which, in all the birds I saw, a 
white egg-tooth still persisted. 
* The nesting material is, of course, to some extent dependent on local 
circumstance. In Anglesea I have seen nests made exclusively of rabbit- 
bones or crab-shells. } 
