AUSTRALIAN BLACK-NAPED TERN, 
number, deposited in a slight hollow in the sand. I have seen this bird on 
another neighbouring sand-bank, also on Solitary Island, near Cape York, and 
in Endeavour Straits, but was unable to procure a specimen from any of the 
last-mentioned localities, on account of its excessive shyness. It is one of 
the most noisy of the Terns, and I generally saw it in small parties of half- 
a-dozen, or thereabouts.” 
Dr. .Macgillivray* discovered these birds breeding on Bushy Island, 
North Queensland, in November. He found their nests on the rugged 
ironstone rock a little above high-water mark, the pair of eggs being placed 
in each instance on a bedding of fine rock-chippings in some convenient 
depression or crevice. 
The type figured and described was collected in Torres Strait, North 
Queensland. 
In the Trans, Linn. Soc. (Lend.), Vol. XIII., p. 329, 1821, Raffles described 
Sterna sumatrana thus : “ A small species with short tail, and wings about 
the same length with it. The prevailing colour is white tinged on the back, 
head, and wing-coverts with light reddish-brown, and mixed with a few dark 
spots. A blackish crescent extends from eye to eye round the back of the head. 
Wing-feathers lead-grey, the first one nearly black. Lower parts snow-white. 
Tail of the same colour as the back. Sumatra.” 
There is no difficulty in recognising in this description the immature of 
the Tern familiarly known as Sterna melanauchen Temminck, figured in the 
Plan. Col. d'Ois., 72® livr., Vol. IV., pi. 427, 1827, from Celebes. The reason 
why Raffles’s name has not been accepted, I cannot say, except it be due 
to the influence of Saunders, who monographed the Terns in the Cat. Birds 
Brit. Mus.y Vol. XXV., in 1896. 
When Saunders wrote up his “ Review of the Terns ” in the Proc. Zool. 
Soc. (Lond.) 1876, he used Raffles’s S. sumatrana for the Indian Little Tern, 
which brought forth the following comment from Hume {Stray Feathers, 
Vol. V., p. 325, 1877) : “ As regards this last, I must dissent to this application 
of Raffles’s name. Bad as his description is, and he was probably dealing with 
an immature bird, ‘ the prevailing colour white, and tail like back ’ and the 
words ‘ a blackish crescent extends from eye to eye, round the back of the 
head,’ to my mind fix the species as identical with melanauchen Temminck, 
the commonest Tern at the Andamans, Nicobars, the Straits and on the bi)asts 
of Summatra.” 
Raffles’s description certainly does apply to the immature of this bird, 
and to nothing else. 
* Emu, Vol. X., p. 229, 1910. 
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