The Forster Tern 
In the Los Banos country, whose wide watery stretches seem to 
possess an irresistible charm for these terns, the arbitrary handling of the 
flood gates brings disaster to many a colony, and a whole season’s effort, 
renewed and persistent on the birds’ part, may prove fruitless in the end. 
For all that the terns are often interlopers themselves, the brooding 
bird resents intrusion, diving angrily at the human visitor and giving 
vent to the only cry which this bird utters, a harsh, low a-a-a (like the 
a in bad), absurdly ineffective as a warning. All the neighbors join in the 
defense, and the intruder is berated in many inflections of very platt 
Deutsch. Every other point in the bird’s make-up, the mild eye, the 
jaunty cap, the snowy plumage, the graceful lines of contour, the flowing 
streamers of the tail, so belie this vulgar vehemence that the observer 
is moved to jeer: “Aw, now, you ar’n't ma-ad!’’ 
Eggs are normally three in number, spotted, after their kind, but 
I have fancied a tendency toward greens in the otherwise neutral ground- 
colors,—an in¬ 
cipient approxi¬ 
mation of the 
normal sur¬ 
roundings. Nests 
containing five or 
six eggs are oc¬ 
casionally found, 
but these are 
undoubtedly the 
product of two 
birds. Marsh- 
dwellers are com¬ 
monly tolerant of 
social breaches. 
I f the eggs 
are neither re¬ 
moved by flood 
nor addled by 
undue exposure 
to the sun, babies 
ensue, of such 
fashion as Mr. 
Rockwell recites: 1 
1 Robert B. Rockwell 
in “The Condor," 
Vol. XIII., Mar. 
1911, p. 60. 
1446 
CONFLICTING CLAIMS 
TWO EGGS OF THE WESTERN GREBE AND ONE OF THE FORSTER TERN OCCUPY 
THE NEST PROPER, WHILE A WAIF EGG OF THE AMERICAN 
COOT APPEARS AT THE RIGHT 
