334 



BIRDS. 



The Common Terns penetrate far up the larger streams, and 

 occupy nesting sites among the river-channel, gravel, and sand, or 

 have their nests on the grass patches which are there found inter- 

 spersed. Such, for instance, is the case on islands of the Tay near 

 Logierait, and up the Tummel ; but rarely are these birds found 

 in large colonies, except upon the sandhills and swarded patches 

 amongst the suitable situations on the coast. 



Tents Muir and the sands of Barrie are haunts ; and there is an 

 old-established colony on the Forfarshire shore. It is interesting to 

 find that there is also a long-established colony of the Arctic Tern 

 upon the Tents Muir coast or sandhills (aud. Mr. W. Evans, supra)^ 

 which however does not appear to have increased its numbers or 

 area on the east coast. 



Sterna dougal I i, ilfoii^. Roseate Tern. 



Eare occasional visitant. 



Mr. J. G. Millais has obtained it at the mouth, or on the tidal part 

 of Tay {Proc. Perth. Soc. of Nat. Sciences, vol. i. p. 182) ; but, so far as I 

 am aware, it has not been elsewhere recorded from any part of our area. 



Writing to me, in his list supplied to me for purposes of this 

 volume, Millais says : "It was suggested to me some years ago that 

 there were Koseate Terns amongst the large colony which breeds 

 along the coast from the ice-house on Tents Muir as far as the Eden 

 mouth, but after two days' careful examination I failed to detect any 

 members of this species amongst the common species. (The common 

 species here is, as I have shown, the Common Tern.) 



Sterna minuta, L. Little Tern. 



Local. Common and increasing as a breeding species. 



The present interesting small Tern confines its breeding opera- 

 tions to the coast-lines here and there, and is almost purely of such 

 maritime habit. 



Both this little bird and the Common Tern have been protected 

 by the proprietor of Earlshall, Mr. Mackenzie, or were so in 1894-5. 

 In the fifties of last century Little Terns were abundant at the 

 same locality as is at present inhabited, or otherwise, at a locality 

 close to it, viz. on the Tents Muir shore. In those days my friend 

 Col. H. W. Feilden had no difficulty in finding from fifteen to twenty 

 nests in one day. These nests were placed close to shingle along the 

 base of the sand-dunes. 



Such also was their nesting place as remembered by myself, but 

 by that time — some twenty-five years later — their numbers were 



