60 
THE CONDOR 
Vol. XIII 
On May 31 the colony contained many more nests than on the preceding week, 
and the birds were much tamer, several alighting on their nests within twenty 
yards of us. On June 8 all the nests contained incubated eggs, and on June 15 
(1908) and June 9 (1909' we found two nests containing freshly hatched young. 
June 22 about half of the eggs had hatched, and on the 30th the water in the lake 
rose sufficiently to flood part of the nests, and many of the unhatched eggs 
were destroyed. 
The young are beautiful little creatures, with a coat of silky down in soft grays 
and browns. While very young they somewhat resemlde chicks, except for their 
long, sharp bills. They take to the water very readily and their knack of self- 
concealment is wonderful. With nests on every side of us and a hundred scream- 
ing parents circling above our heads, an hour’s hard search rewarded us with only 
four young, although there must have been at least a hundred young ones hiding 
in the area covered by our search. The young as soon as they can ‘"‘navugate’ ’ 
are very animated, and show an unusual fear of an intruder. They are also quite 
pugnacious, l)abies no 1 irger thru a warbler, pecking at an outstretched finger as 
viciously as a young hawk. 
Fig. 26. NEwrV II.a'rCHED VOUXG forster terns 
On Jul\" 6 many of the remaining nests still contained eggs, and one belated 
set was found July 21, on which date a great many young of the year were on the 
wing, and the breeding season of 1907 was practically at an end. 
The tendency to colonize was apparent wdierever we found terns nesting. The 
fifteen nests found in 1906 were located on musk-rat houses covering a tract of 
possibly twenty acres, and outside of this area we did not find a single nest. Sev- 
eral of the rat houses supported two nests, and one had three nests containing 
complete sets. The site of the colony in 1907 was about 300 yards from 
that of 1906 and covered a somewhat larger space, but the great bulk of the nests 
(probably seventy-five in all > were in an area of less than ten acres. Four of the 
floating nests mentioned above were close enough together to permit being photo- 
graphed at one exposure. (See Fig. 23.) 
The birds were at all times extremely demonstrative, rising in a cloud and 
coming to meet us with loud cries, wdiile we were still a hundred yards or more 
distant from the nests. The din of their voices would increase as we approached 
the nests, and (after the young were hatched) when the nests were reached the 
birds would swoop down on us from quite a height on noiseless wings, and as they 
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