BIRDS 415 



the nests are placed among the sand-hills. There are exceptions 

 to this practice. For example, in 1891 we found one nest of 

 this species on the open beach, a hollow in the pebbles, lined 

 with rabbit bones, containing two eggs; a second nest was 

 also placed on the beach above high tide mark, lined with 

 small sticks, and containing a single egg. But we saw most 

 nests in and among the bents of the tall sand-hills, carefully 

 watched by hundreds of parent birds, which hover with shrill 

 cries over the heads of an intruder. Sometimes a bolder bird 

 than the rest returns to its egg within full view, but the 

 majority circle overhead, or dart angrily downwards, until their 

 solicitude has been lulled to rest. As these birds poise 

 themselves gracefully aloft in a flood of sunshine, their breasts 

 often appear to be suffused with delicate pink colour — an 

 optical delusion, however, soon dispelled. A much smaller 

 number nest at the north end, lining some slight hollow in the 

 turf with a few stems of grass, while even the newly-hatched 

 nestlings, with instinctive dread of danger, crouch in the grass 

 almost motionless save for respiration. The little fellows grow 

 so rapidly that in a few hours, and before the chipper has fallen 

 from the tip of the bill, you wonder how they were ever packed 

 away within a small and round egg-case. I have never actually 

 seen the old birds feed the young with small fish. They prefer 

 to wait, even though impatiently, until peace is regained, when 

 the ground will be dotted in a very few moments with the white 

 bodies of the breeding Terns. The habits of the Terns which 

 breed at Ravenglass do not seem to differ from the colony at 

 the south end of Walney, nesting also among extensive sand- 

 hills. Upon Rockliffe marsh the Terns have no choice but to 

 nest upon the rough turf of the saltings. Some idea of the per- 

 severance with which this species adheres to traditional breeding- 

 grounds, even where most persecuted, may be gathered from the 

 fact that the Eockliffe colony bred on the marsh as regularly 

 fifty or sixty years ago as at the present time. In corroboration 

 of this, I quote an unpublished note of Mr. T. C. Heysham, 

 written in 1834, though undated: 'The Common Tern (Sterna 

 hirundo) annually breeds near the western extremity of Rock- 

 liffe salt marsh, at no great distance from the juncture of the 



