
8o SOOTY TERN, 
eye, and whole lower parts, pure white ; tail, forked, the outer 
feathers about an inch and three-quarters longer than “the 
middle ones ; the wings extend upwards of two inches beyond 
the tail; legs and feet, black ; hind toe, small, straight, and 
pointed. 
The female, as to plumage, differs in nothing from the 
male. The yearling birds, several of which I met with, have 
the plumage of the crown white at the surface, but dusky 
below ; so that the boundaries of the black, as it will be in the 
perfect bird, are clearly defined ; through the eye a line of 
black passes down the neck for about an inch, reaching about 
a quarter of an inch before it; the bill is not so black as in 
the others ; the legs and feet, dull orange, smutted with brown 
or dusky ; tips and edges of the primaries, blackish ; shafts, 
white. 
This species breeds in the salt marshes ; the female drops 
her eggs, generally three or four in number, on the dry drift 
crass, Without the slightest appearance of a nest ; they are of 
a greenish olive, spotted with brown. 
A specimen of this tern has been deposited in the Museum 
of this city (Philadelphia). 
SOOTY TERN. (Sterna fuliginosa.) 
PLATE LXXII.—Fic. 7. 
La Hirondelle de Mer a grande enverguer, Buff. viii. p. 345.—Egeg-bird, Forst. 
Voy. p. 113.—Noddy, Damp. Voy. iii. p. 142.—Arct. Zool. No. 447.—Lath. 
Syn. iii. p. 352.—Peale’s Museum, No. 3459. 
STERNA FULIGINOSA.—LatTHaM. 
8. fuliginosa, Bonap. Synop. p. 355. 
Tuts bird has been long known to navigators, as its appearance 
at sea usually indicates the vicinity of land ; instances, however, 
have occurred in which they have been met with one hundred 
leagues from shore.* The species is widely dispersed over the 
* Cook’s Voyages, i. 275, 

