250 
SHORT-TAILED TERN. 
dissection, and found both sexes alike in colour. Their sto- 
machs contained grasshoppers, crickets, spiders, &c, but no fish. 
The people on the seacoast have since informed me, that this 
bird comes to them only in the fall, or towards the end of sum- 
mer; and is more frequently seen about the mill-ponds, and 
fresh water marshes, than in the bays; and add, that it feeds on 
grasshoppers, and other insects, which it finds on the meadows 
and marshes, picking them from the grass, as well as from the 
surface of the water. They have never known it to associate 
with the Lesser Tern, and consider it altogether a different bird. 
Tliis opinion seems confirmed by the above circumstances, and 
by the fact of its greater extent of wing, being full three inches 
wider than the Lesser Tern; and also making its appearance 
after the others have gone off. 
The Short-tailed Tern measures eight inches and a half, from 
the point of the hill to the tip of the tail, and twenty-three in- 
ches in extent; the bill is an inch and a quarter in length, sharp 
pointed, and of a deep black colour; a patch of black covers the 
crown, auriculars, spot before the eye, and hind-head; the fore- 
head, eyelids, sides of the neck, passing quite round below the 
hind-head, and whole lower parts, are pure white; the back is 
dark ash, each feather broadly tipt with brown; the wings a 
dark lead colour, extending an inch and a half beyond the tail, 
which is also of the same tint, and slightly forked; shoulders of 
the wing brownish ash; legs and webbed feet tawny. It had a 
sharp shrill cry when wounded and taken. 
This is probably the Brown Tern mentioned by Willough- 
by, of which so many imperfect accounts have already been 
given. The figure in the plate, like those which accompany it, 
is reduced to one half the size of life. 
