The Common Tern 
and Newfoundland south to North Carolina, western Pennsylvania, islands in Lake 
Erie, Manitoba, southern Saskatchewan, and Alberta. Not known to breed anywhere 
west of the Rocky Mountains. Migrates abundantly in the interior east of the Rockies 
and along the Atlantic seaboard; less commonly through Arizona and on the Pacific 
Coast from British Columbia southward to Venezuela and Brazil. 
Occurrence in California. —Not common coastwise; sporadically (or briefly) 
abundant. 
Authorities.—Heermann (Sterna hirundo ), Rep. Pac. R. R. Surv., vol. x., 
1859, p. 75 (Sacramento Valley); Dwight , Auk, vol. xviii., 1901, p. 54 (plumage and 
mo\t) \ Beck, Proc. Calif. Acad. Sci., ser. 4, vol. iii., 1910, p. 64 (off Monterey; migr.); 
Willett, Pac. Coast Avifauna, no. 7, 1912, p. 16 (occurrence in s. Calif.). 
WHAT a piece of work is a Tern! how gentle in instinct! how un¬ 
trammeled in discursion! in form and moving how elegant and admirable! 
in action how like the swallow! in innocence how like the dove! the beauty 
of the air! the paragon of sea-birds! 
Terns are the animating spirits of summer seas. Not bluff and 
sturdy like the Gulls, they have little place in winter’s storm, but when the 
sun has re-established his dominion and only Zephyr pricks the caracoling 
waves, then the blue-gray daintiness of the Tern is as necessary to the 
scene as are the criss-cross mirrors of the amethystine sea. We hail with 
delight the appearance in the offing of a busy, happy company of the 
white-winged birds, weaving in the air by their incessant plyings a close- 
meshed fisher-net, wherein many a luckless minnow is entangled. Soon a 
lone straggler from out the company drifts shoreward, parting the air 
with graceful wing, now pausing critically over a suspected fish, like some 
pensive mosquito with his beak down-turned; now dropping with a splash 
beneath the wave, or making a nimble catch at the surface without 
wetting his plumage. Ever and anon the muffled undertone of the waves 
is pierced by a weird and half-petulant cry, te-er te-erve, childish, plaintive, 
yet somehow thrilling and exultant. And as the bird passes to rejoin 
his companions, you find he has borne away your fancy evermore to hover 
where blue skies laugh at blue waters, and innumerable wavelets trifle 
with innumerable sunbeams. 
The occurrence of the Common Tern in California is still somewhat 
shrouded in mystery. The older authorities knew nothing at all about 
it. The first record appears to be that by Bishop, 1 of three specimens 
taken by H. W. Marsden at Pacific Beach, Sept. 8, 12 and 15, 1904. 
Yet Rollo H. Beck ,2 writing in 1910, finds it of common occurrence at 
Monterey, and records 109 California specimens in the collection of the 
Academy of Science. Willett 3 says it is probably a regular migrant 
1 Condor, Vol. VII., Sept. 190s, P- 141. 
■ Proc. Calif. Acad. Sci., 4th series, Vol. III., p. 64, Sept. 17, 1910. 
3 Pac. Coast Avifauna, No. 7, p. 16. 
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