234 SEA-SIDE ORNITHOLOGY. 
posed and often plundered nests. The Cormorants, two 
species of which once nested on our rocky cliffs, have long 
since left us. The Herring Gulls have all been driven as 
far east as Passamaquoddy. Only the Black-headed Gull, a 
Southern and somewhat rare species, and four varieties of 
Terns still breed on the islands off our coast. This gull 
(Xema atricilla) was formerly quite abundant along our en- 
tire New England coast, as far east as the Penobscot. Itis 
now chiefly found on a few islands off Connecticut, near 
Nantucket, and on the coast of Maine, near St. George. It 
visits our coast late in May or early in June, and leaves us 
early in the fall, upon the first appearance of cool weather. 
Some twenty-nine or thirty years since two or three pairs 
were still breeding on Egg Rock, near Nahant, in company 
with the Wilson's Tern, but long since they have entirely 
disappeared. This gull, when its nest is disturbed, is very 
demonstrative in its protests, and its loud outcries of Aá-Aá- 
há, resembling loud peals of derisive laughter, are very re- 
markable : anda even startling in their singularity. 
The Least Tern, the Aetio Tern, Wilson's Tern, and the 
Roseate Tern, still breed on our coast, and, except the last, 
along the entire coast of New England. The Roseate is 
chiefly eonfined to the neighborhood of Nantucket, and the 
southern coast of Connecticut. It once bred on islands near 
Beverly. The eggs of all these species are much sought for 
by the Gabi: ad as they are rarely permitted to rear 
their young, the day of their final extermination cannot be 
far distant. 5 
After midsummer our waters are visited for a few weeks 
by two species of Petrels, or Mother Carey's Chickens ( Tha- 
lassidroma Wilsonii and T. Leachii). They are outsiders 
= altogether, never visiting the land except during the breed- 
‘ing season. Where the former breed is still shrouded in 
. mystery. They appear in our waters early in August, but 
; here they come foe or where they remain eleven months 
r, "nobod My mentions for Dias knows." . 




