380 SHORT-TAILED TERN. 



also in the meadows at the same time, driven thither doubtless 

 by the violence of the storm. 



I examined upwards of thirty individuals of this species 

 by dissection, and found both sexes alike in colour. Their 

 stomachs contained grasshoppers, crickets, spiders, &c, but 

 no fish. The people on the sea-coast have since informed me 

 that this bird comes to them only in the fall, or towards the 

 end of summer, and is more frequently seen about the mill- 

 ponds and fresh-water marshes than in the bays ; and add, 

 that it feeds on grasshoppers and other insects which it finds 

 on the meadows and marshes, picking them from the grass, 

 as well as from the surface of the water. They have never 

 known it to associate with the lesser tern, and consider it 

 altogether a different bird. This opinion seems confirmed by 

 the above circumstances, and by the fact of its greater extent 

 of wing, being full three inches wider than the lesser tern ; 

 and also making its appearance after the others have gone off. 



The short-tailed tern measures eight inches and a half 

 from the point of the bill to the tip of the tail, and twenty- 

 three inches in extent ; the bill is an inch and a quarter in 

 length, sharp pointed, and of a deep black colour ; a patch of 

 black covers the crown, auriculars, spot before the eye and 

 hind head ; the forehead, eyelids, sides of the neck, passing 

 quite round below the hind head, and whole lower parts, are 

 pure white ; the back is dark ash, each feather broadly tipt 

 with brown ; the wings, a dark lead colour, extending an inch 

 and a half beyond the tail, which is also of the same tint, and 

 slightly forked ; shoulders of the wing, brownish ash ; legs 

 and webbed feet, tawny. It had a sharp shrill cry when 

 wounded and taken. 



This is probably the brown tern mentioned by Willoughby, 

 of which so many imperfect accounts have already been given. 

 The figure in the plate, like those which accompany it, is 

 reduced to one half the size of life. 



