204 
NATURE STUDY. 
Gulls and Terns of New England. III. 
BY W. R. VARICK, M. D. 
The Feast Tern, (Sterna antillarum), is the last and rar¬ 
est, as well as the least memDer of the family who nests in 
New England, and we must go south of Cape Cod 
to find him at all. He is only nine inches long, and re¬ 
minds one of a big, white mosquito as he flutters over the 
marshes and ponds, his sharp little bill pointed straight 
down, and his keen eye on the lookout for game. Fortun¬ 
ately he is not addicted to mosquito melodies. In addi¬ 
tion to the usual black crown, he has black lores and a 
white forehead. His upper parts are dark pearl gray, look¬ 
ing almost blue, and a narrow border of black edges his 
wings. His range includes suitable localities, inland, all 
over the United States, and he is common on the Califor¬ 
nia coast; but the day will always be remembered by the 
Yankee bird lover, when this little beauty first skims across 
his visual field. He will hover over a marsh and circle 
around a patch of sea-weed for a few minutes, and pose with 
the greatest grace, till one begins to note his markings for 
identification, when, with a few strong wing beats, he is 
gone. I have only found him on the deserted ponds and 
beaches of the south shore of Martha’s Vineyard where he 
breeds. 
There are two large terns about twenty inches long that 
are rare stragglers here, the Caspian, (Sterna caspia ), 
and the Royal, (Sterna maxima ). They can scarcely be 
told apart in life, though the former is chiefly a bird of the 
interior while the latter is a coast resident of our Gulf and 
South Atlantic States. They have large, thick, red bills, 
and black crowns extended to form a crest. In Flori¬ 
da in winter, the Royal Terns are among the birds one sees 
every day along the shore. 
