LESSER TERN. 
373 
The Lesser Tern feeds on beetles, crickets, spiders, and 
other insects, which it picks up from the marshes, as well as 
on small fish, on which it plunges at sea. Like the former, 
it also makes extensive incursions inland along the river 
courses, and has frequently been shot several hundred miles 
from the sea. It sometimes sits for hours together on the 
sands, as if resting after the fatigues of flight to which it is 
exposed. 
The Lesser Tern is extremely tame and unsuspicious, often 
passing you on its flight, and within a few yards, as it traces 
the windings and indentations of the shore in search of its 
favourite prawns and skippers. Indeed, at such times it 
appears altogether heedless of man, or its eagerness for food 
overcomes its apprehensions for its own safety. We read in 
ancient authors, that the fishermen used to float a cross of 
wood, in the middle of which was fastened a small fish for a 
bait, with limed twigs stuck to the four corners, on which the 
bird darting was entangled by the wings. But this must have 
been for mere sport, or for its feathers, the value of the bird 
being scarcely worth the trouble, as they are generally lean, 
and the flesh savouring strongly of fish. 
The Lesser Tern is met with in the south of Russia, and 
about the Black and Caspian Sea; also in Siberia about the 
Irtish.* With the former, it inhabits the shores of England 
during the summer, where it breeds, and migrates, as it does 
here, to the south as the cold of autumn approaches. 
This species is nine and a half inches long, and twenty 
inches in extent ; bill, bright reddish yellow ; nostril, pervious ; 
lower mandible, angular ; front, white, reaching in two narrow 
points over the eye; crown, band through the eye, and hind 
head, black, tapering to a point as it descends ; cheeks, sides 
of the neck, and whole lower parts, of the most rich and glossy 
white, like the brightest satin ; upper parts of the back and 
wings, a pale glossy ash, or light lead colour ; the outer edges 
* Pennant. 
