ROSEATE TERN. 



STERNA DOUGALLI, Montagu. 



Sterna dougallii, Montagu, Orn. Diet. Suppl. (1813) ; Macg. 



v. p. 648 ; Hewitson, ii. p. 479. 

 Sterna dougalli, Naum. x. p. 78 ; Yarr. ed. 4, iii. p. 544 ; 



Dresser, viii. p. 273. 



Sterne de Dougall, French ; Dougatt's Seeschwatbe, Ger- 

 man. 



This very beautiful species, formerly a tolerably 

 common summer visitor to several localities on our 

 Islands, has become of late years a decidedly rare 

 British bird. My friend Mr. Howard Saunders, in his 

 excellent ' Manual,' attributes the present scarcity of 

 this Tern in our country mainly to the increase of the 

 Common Tern, a stronger-billed and altogether more 

 robust bird, and informs us that he has been assured 

 that three colonies of the Roseate have successively 

 given way to the former Tern on the coast of Brittany 

 in the course of a few years. I saw a very few of the 

 present species about one of the islets of the Scilly 

 group in 1852 ; my attention was drawn to them at 

 once by the difference between their note and that of 



