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 CHAPTER V

A VENGEFUL COMMUNITY

T was terns, I think, who, when some killing Scotch naturalist or other had wounded one of their number, came down to it, pitifully, as it lay on the sea, and bore it away upon their backs and wings. I can better realise this incident now, after having walked about a ternery in these northern parts, and again tried the experiment—which in the south produced no special consequences—of interfering with their young. Upon my taking one of them in my hand, the whole community, amounting, perhaps, to several hundreds, gathered in one great, air-filling cloud, a little above my head, and with violent sweeps and piercing cries, seemed to threaten an actual attack. When I let the young thing flutter to the ground, and it moved and struggled upon it, the excitement was redoubled. It seemed as though they were animated with hope at seeing it out of my grasp, and as I took it up and let it go twice again, each time with the same result, I have little doubt that this was really the case. It was not only the two parents—assuming them to have been there—who attacked me. Many did so; many, too, seemed to feel, at some time, an extra degree of fury, whilst not a bird in the whole crowd but was violently and vengefully moved. These terns, as they clustered 31