A COLONY OF LITTLE TERNS.

E have often thought that terns are not only the most TV engaging of the feathered tribes, but must be the happiest. Excepting song, they have all the advantages which a benevolent Providence, or the struggle for existence, has bestowed on the most favoured birds. Their powers of flight are unsurpassed; they swim upon the water like ducks ; they run upon the land without awkwardness. They frequent in the breeding season the most attractive stretches of the sea coast, and at other times they are free to travel and they migrate to the other ends of the globe. They are at home on land and on sea, and during their migrations they visit rivers and inland sheets of water, both fresh and' salt, from the Caspian to the Serpentine. They have few enemies, their food. is -always abundant, and but for the anxieties which must be involved in nesting on the ground, life can present - few terrors to a healthy tern. Although one species, the black tern, has ceased to nest in our islands during the memory of men still living, several other species are still regular visitors to the British coasts, where they breed in colonies. The com- mon tern and the Arctic t.ern are still abundant; the Sandwich tern and the little tern are in several places receiving the protection which they deserve both from landowners and County Councils. Neither the game-preserver nor the agri- culturist can say a word against these harmless birds. Their enemies are the egg-collector, and later the shore-shooter with a 10s, gun license. The danger from the egg-collector is,. perhaps, the more serious ; for, as we have said, the birds lay their eggs on the bare shingle. For nearly three weeks of in- cubation they run perpetual dangers on frequented coasts.

Day after day the defenceless bird sits upon her treasures :—

" Each spotted egg with ivory lips she turns, Day after day with fond expectance burns, Hears the young prisoner chirping in his cell, And breaks, in hemispheres, th' obdurate shell."

It was the first week of June when we paid a visit to a colony of little terns in the Essex Marshes. Imagine a grey day when rain is always threatening, though the weather- stained old boatman who rows us across the estuary declares it will hold off. Half-an-hour's pull against the tide lands 113'

at a deserted martello tower, and from there it is an easy walk to the spot which the little terns haunt during the nesting season. Let us not describe it more precisely.

The place is protected by the Essex County Council; and egg-collectors will find it hard to escape the vigi- lance of the neighbouring farmer, who rents the marsh for grazing land and plays the part of custodian of the birds' eggs. There is a long strip of land running for a- mile or so north and south, though rarely above a couple of hundred yards in width. On the right hand the North Sea breaks upon' the beach and casts up the shingle, the weed, and sea refuse into irregular ridges. On the left hand a narrow tidal creek runs up from the estuary between muddy banks fringed on either side with coarse herbage and the

usual maritime vegetation which loves a brackish soil. The tide is running in, and a stream of muddy water, frothy and. discoloured, is rising visibly against the sides of the channel

and making its way among the tufts of grass and the lesser creeks. The sea is tossing under a leaden sky and brown- sailed boats are tacking against the wind and trying to round the point. On the other side of the creek a flat expanse of marshland extends for a mile or two before cultivated fields. and hedgerows bordered by high elms rise behind the little grey farmhouse. Here and • there round-backed bridges of

tarred wood cross the dykes or ditches and serve as gang- ways for the flocks. An old heron, disturbed at his fishing in the ditch, rises with difficulty, and stretching out his legs. behind, flaps his long rounded wings and flies languidly away. The marsh to the left of us is dotted with white-fleeced sheep and white-faced bullocks grazing on the salting's.. Three carrion crows are perched on the nearest bridge-rail waiting for the tide to turn and leave

them some refuse behind. We tramp along the crunch- ing shingle looking out ahead for the little terns, which since time immemorial have resorted to this spit of

land, where undisturbed by man they may lay their eggs and rear their -young. It is a dismal, cheerless land- scape, yet, as they say, not without a charm of its own. The extensive flatness of the marshes' on the one hand, and the distant skyline of the sea on the other, give a pleasant sense of solitude very attractive to the terns, which arrive with faithful punctuality. The old boatman assures us they have come; about the first days of May is their time ; but there

be wonderful few to what there used to be. He cannot explain why: for no one takes the eggs, nor shoots the old birds, that he knows of. We have walked perhaps the better part of half-a-mile along the beach before we can discover a sign of the little terns' presence. On a sudden a couple of birds rise twenty yards before us, and mount into the air with many distressed cries and feigned gestures of their wings. They are terns' sure enough, for as they fly round we can see through our spy-glasses their pearly-grey feathering, straight yellOW bills, somewhat forky tails, and long bent wings. From.

their behaviour we may judge that they have eggs, and se walk as near as may be to the spot where the birds rose. Soon other members of the colony show themselves, and the air is full of their Shrill 'cries of " Kree, kree." There seem to be about twenty or twenty-five pairs altogether; some settle on the beach at a distance to watch our intrusion, others disappear and apparently fly off, whilst certain of the more anxious continue hovering high above us with many expres- sions' of distrust. Although the trivial name for the whole family of terns (of which several species regularly frequent our "coasts) is "sea-swallow," there is but little resemblance to the family of Hirundines. The terns are small members of the great family of gulls, and their actions are like enough to a small and graceful sea-gull.

Even when we have got to the actual nesting-place it is no easy matter to discover the eggs. The spot is a stretch of fine sandy shingle well above the highest tide, and, indeed, above the ridge of the beach, and inclining rather in the direction opposite to the sea. The pebbles are mixed with broken cockle-shells, and long sea-grey grasses, horn poppies, and fleshy sea-coast plants of the beet and goose-foot order spring up among the stones. Here and there are open patches, and in one such as this the birds choose to scrape a small round depression in the fine shingle, and lay their eggs. It is the merest chance whether you tread on them before you see them ; the thing is to keep the eye expecting two pebbles of a size lying together, and then suddenly you discover they are eggs of a sandy brown or huffish yellow, spotted and blotched with a reddish brown, sometimes almost black. It is a rare emotion for the ornithologist to see for the first time the nesting-spot of a new bird. By pacing• the stretch of beach for a quarter of an hour with our eyes fixed on the ground we are rewarded by finding six nests, all with two eggs, except one that has three. It is a strang3 thing how • practice, even so short, trains the eye. Finding apparently

• that we are leaving without having robbed a nest, the agita- tion in the colony subsides, and no sooner are our backs turned than the little birds drop hastily, and on looking back we can see them through the glasses settling themselves con- tentedly and composedly upon their eggs. In another week we should doubtless have found nestlings in yellow down crouching among.the pebbles and have received a more vociferous welcome from the agitated parent birds. There are still a number of such colonies of little terns scattered round unfrequented parts of the British coast, though every few years an old haunt is found to be deserted. Like the others of the genus, Sterna minute—the little tern—is a migratory bird and leaves our coasts in the autumn when the gales are becoming unpleasant. In winter these little birds travel as far south as the Cape of Good Hope and find a genial climate on the coast of Africa. The same which we see hovering over

the grey Essex coast and nestling on the shingle have perhaps seen the coast of that vast continent from Tangier to Cape Town. They may have seen English soldiers and Dutch farmers at the Cape ; German merchants at Walfisch Bay; Portuguese and Frenchmen contending with Belgians on the Congo; cannibal feasts on the coast of Guinea ; a civilised Republic of chattering negroes in Liberia; caravans of Arabs crossing the Sahara and the Moorish Empire of Morocco. Yet so strong is the instinct which impels them to retprn that no spot will suit them to lay their eggs but this grey, dismal • streak of shingle on the Essex coast.