AUSTRALIAN CASPIAN TERN. 
of the parent birds always betray the vicinity of eggs or young birds, about which 
they display much anxiety. According to my experience at Point Cloates, eggs 
may be found at almost any month of the year, as the following dates will 
show : May 3/1896, two fresh eggs ; March 25/1893, several clutches on 
Fraser Island, Point Cloates ; April 5/1894, two eggs ; September 16/1894 
and November 9/1894, two eggs ; August 25/1891, half-grown yoimg birds 
noted. September 21/1890, young birds in nest about a week old.” 
Captain S. A. White sends me the following note : — 
“ This bird is plentiful in Bass Straits, frequenting Kangaroo Island and 
all the islands of St. Vincent and Spencer Gulf. I have never seen them there 
congregate in numbers at breeding time hke other Terns. They are pugnacious 
at that time, and will attack almost any bird that comes near them. Eggs 
are generally two in number, of a stone color, blotched with brown.” 
Mr. J. W. Mellor writes : “ These fine birds are moderately plentiful 
in South Australian waters, and breed on the small islands. It used to breed 
freely on the spit near Kingscote, Kangaroo Island, but has been driven from 
here by the inroads of civilization. I have also seen them in Victorian and 
Tasmanian waters.” 
Mr. Edwin Ashby found it numerous at Venus Bay in South Australia in 
February, 1910 ; he also records it up the Murray River. 
Mr. Charles Belcher says : “ The Caspian Tern is a very rare visitor to 
Southern Victoria. I once saw one at Campbell’s Point, Connewarre Lakes, but 
have never met with the bird again in that district. The species breeds on 
numerous small islands of the Furneaux group, not in colonies, as do most other 
Terns, but each pair keeping an islet to themselves. The nest is a shallow 
depression lined with a few broken shells, and is always placed near the highest 
point of the island. The birds make a great commotion if anyone lands near 
their nesting-place, and so readily betray its whereabouts. I took a pair of eggs 
on an island in Franklin Sound at the end of November, 1901, but the 
breeding season is at its height rather earlier than that, as we found several 
nests with young about the same time.” 
The nomenclature of this species has been unfairly treated. As long 
ago as 1862 Coues {Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci. PTiilad., p. 538) noted : “ The proper 
specific appellation of the Caspian Tern is not ‘ caspia Pallas,’ but ‘ tschegrava 
Lepechin,’ which latter name is proposed in the same work in which Pallas 
called the bird ‘ caspia^^ but has priority by several pages. As, however, the 
word is not only barbarous, but also exceedingly cacophonus, and especially 
as caspia has become so well established by common consent, I do not think 
it would be expedient to supersede Pallas’s name, in view of the very slight 
priority of that of Lepechin.” 
335 
