BRITISH BIRDS. 
203 
BLACK TERN. 
SCARE-CROW, CLOVEN-FOOTED GULL, OR CAR-SWALLOW. 
{^Sterna Jiffipedes, Lin. — U Epouvantail, Buff.) 
This bird meafures about ten inches in length, 
and twenty-four in breadth, and weighs about two 
ounces and a half. The bill, head, neck, bread:, 
and belly, are a dull black : back, wings, and tail, 
a deep afh-colour: vent, and the exterior feather 
on each fide of its fharp forked tail, white ; and 
in the male there is a white fpot on the throat. 
The legs and feet are a dufky red, the webs much 
depreffed in the middle. 
The Black Tern is of a fize between that of the 
lafl: two. Like them it frequents the fea-fliores in 
fummer ; but its habits and manners are fomewhat 
different: it has a fhriller cry, does not affociate 
with them, and feems rather to prefer the rivers, 
fens, marflies, and lakes inland, to the fea. It 
breeds and fears its young among the reeds and 
rufhes in the former places, and is faid to lay three 
or four eggs of a dirty greenifh colour, fpotted and 
encircled about the middle with black. It feeds on 
beetles, maggots, and other infects, as well as on 
fmall fiflies ; . and, like the reft of the genus, is very 
noify, clamorous, and reftlefs. Voyagers and orni- 
thologifts fay it is met with in Hudfon’s Bay, New- 
foundland, and Iceland, and that it is common in 
Siberia, and the fait lakes in the defarts of Tartary. 
