88 
SHORT-TAILED TERN. 
people on the seacoast have since informed me that this bird 
comes to them only in the fall, or towards the end of summer ; 
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. This opinion 
seems confirmed by the above circumstances, and by the fact of its 
greater extent of wing, being full three inches wider than the Les- 
ser 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 bill to the tip of the tail, and twenty-three inches 
in extent ; the bill is an inch and a quarter in length, sharp point- 
ed, and of a deep black color ; a patch of black covers the crown, 
auriculars, spot before the eye and hind head ; the forehead, eye- 
lids, 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 color, ex- 
tending 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 Willoughby, 
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. 
