The Least Tern 
Taken in Monterey County 
Photo by the Author 
A TERN A-WING 
line and they shall have no respite from 
the common lot. They must cease their 
tropical flutterings, their happy wander¬ 
ings up and down the airy aisles which 
parallel a thousandfold the illimitable 
shores. Come, birdies, sea sprites, fog- 
fays, wisps of sunlit spray,—howsoe’er ye 
call yourselves—get you to your knitting' 
Reproduce your sylphian, frivolous kind! 
Where? Oh, any stretch of sun-warmed 
sand will do, fronting the ocean. Oh, 
of course, the ocean. ’ But better one 
where humans will not come, nor dogs— 
those boisterous marplots! Better, too, 
if you have a stretch of quiet waters to 
the rear, a lagoon or river or imprisoned 
pool, where fish will never fail you for 
the babies. 
Truth to tell, the shores of California no longer offer safe asylum to 
these tender children of the tropics. They still nest with us, or try to, 
but the odds are against them. The playground of humanity, as we 
boast our southern shores to be, is no fit place for birds like these. The 
beaches belong to us. The sand is ours. We require it for the erection 
of cottages, casinos, bath-houses, and other important things—and to 
exercise our dogs, withal. Tfu mermaids are gone, the Tritons are tied. 
Better that these 
birds go after them. 
In the early stage 
of egg-laying the birds 
are very easily dis¬ 
turbed, rising in a 
cloud at the distant 
approach of danger, 
and scattering in a 
fairy maelstrom of 
protest. As incubation 
advances only the 
nearer pairs attend 
upon the danger, so 
that the intruder 
moves about under a 
shifting halo of ex- 
TERN COUNTRY 
! 455 
