66 On two Nesting-places of Gannets and Terns. 
of the Great Sea-Tern (S. bernsteini [?] *), with mostly fresh 
or slightly incubated eggs, no young. These are the most 
jeautiful eggs of the Terns which I have met with. One 
egg apiece is all they lay, and there was no attempt at a nest. 
I took about 30 eggs; nearly all these were fresh. 
Besides S. dougalli and S. bernsteini [?] there was a colony 
white Terns with black bills, apparently some form of 
Gygis, but I had no means of identifying them at the time, and 
my skins were afterwards lost. These were not nesting. 
There were also a number of Turnstones on the island, 
and from their behaviour I at first imagined that they must 
be nesting, but such was- not the case. The manager of the 
coconut-plantation, Mr. Speirs, who was well acquainted with 
all the birds of these islands, assured me, however, that he 
had on one occasion found the Turnstone nesting on an island 
of the Chagos group, where he saw the birds sitting on 
their nests in the debris above high-water mark, and was 
most positive about this, adding that he saw the eggs himself. 
He said he had often searched for them since, but had never 
again succeeded in finding them. Those I observed had their 
breeding-organs quite undeveloped, as I shot several and 
examined them. There was also a small species of Curlew 
on the island, but as, like all this kind, it was very wary, I 
could not get a shot, and was therefore unable to identify it. 
On a few bushes round the edge of the water I found two 
species of Heron—the Common Heron ( Ardea cinerea) and 
another which I could not at the time identify, and, having 
lost the skins I made, I have not since been able to do sofi. 
A. cinerea had young ones or hard-set eggs, and the other 
sort only eggs, sometimes as many as six in a nest. 
There were a good many Frigate-birds about, but they 
* [Commander Farquhar names the bird 8. maxima, a species mainly 
American; but it was more probably the very local 8. bernsteini, which is 
found about Diego Garcia, Rodriguez, and the vicinity, though possibly 
the widely-distributed Swift Tern, S. bergii. — Edd.] 
f Description of the small Heron. —Bill yellow; head capped with 
bull'; legs horn-colour; toes black; irides yellow: all the rest white. 
Of about the same size as the common Cattle-Heron of India, but not 
corresponding to that bird in breeding-plumage. 
