THE CONDOR 
A Bi-Monthly Magazine of 
Western Ornithology 
Volume XXIV March-April, 1922 Number 2 
[Issued April 6, 1922] 
A LARGE TERN COLONY IN TEXAS 
By J. R. PEMBERTON 
WITH ELEVEN PHOTOS 
URING the first two weeks of May, 1921, while working the country be- 
tween Brownsville and Point Isabel, Cameron County, Texas, and the 
shores of the many lagoons near Point Isabel, and also on a trip to 
Green Island, | was constantly wondering where the great numbers of terns 
which were nearly always in view could be nesting. It was not until May 14, 
when | was working about eight miles west of Point Isabel, that | found the 
place. | was searching for nests of the Long-billed Curlew in the grassy mea- 
dows adjoining the sloughs and salt-water covered areas of this delta country 
of the Rio Grande River. | noticed both Gull-billed and Common terns were 
fishing in the waters; but it was not for some time that it finally dawned on 
me that they were carrying the fish away with them instead of eating them on 
the spot. This, of course, was news, so I ascended an eminence of perhaps 
twenty feet elevation and watched the terns. They all flew straight away 
toward the center of a very large body of water called the Bahia Grande, and 
using my glass | saw a low flat island and hovering over it in several places a 
shimmering, fluttering, white mass which meant only one thing—there was the 
center of operations of the terns. 
I judged from experience that the mile or so of water which separates the 
mainland from the island would not be deeper than three feet, but in order to 
carry some cameras I got a small boat and made my first visit on May 16 in 
company with a Mexican fisherman. On that trip, by constant soundings, I 
found that the water’s depth was never greater than two feet, so my next trip 
on May 23 was made by wading across. Mr. A. J. Kirn accompanied me on 
the second trip. R. D. Camp, who is'both Federal and State Game Warden in . 
that district, made a trip with Mr. Robert Runyon on June 5. The remarks 
on each of the breeding species which follow are drawn from notes made on 
all three of the trips. 
Now, a large tern colony may be an old story to some of our fraternity, but 
I am sure that the vast majority would have been as interested as I was upon 
first seeing many thousands of terns belonging to seven different species rise 
from their nests. That matter of the seven species is important—here was a 
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