Page:The Zoologist, 3rd series, vol 1 (1877).djvu/128

102 its very peculiar cry (which if once heard can never be mistaken or forgotten) we were very much puzzled, as for a long time we could not make out what bird uttered it, or from what direction it proceeded. The sound appeared to come from all points of the compass, yet no birds appeared in sight: after some time we chanced to look upwards, and were only just able to perceive some birds wheeling about and soaring at an immense height, and all the while screaming loudly. This wild flight and strange cry, so unlike that of any other bird we knew, induced us to watch them closely, and after some time they gradually lowered their flight to the water, and we then saw that they were some species of Tern. We got into our boat, and succeeded in shooting a couple, and found they were the Sandwich Tern. This peculiar habit of soaring to a great height (almost out of sight) and wheeling about in wide circles, occasionally chasing each other and screaming loudly, is more often to be witnessed early in the season, before they begin to sit, although occasionally in autumn a pair may be seen acting in a similar manner, but almost invariably on fine bright days. As these Terns remained feeding about the bay and estuary, we were most anxious to find their breeding ground, but although we made many enquiries and searches we were unable to discover it. About the time we supposed the females were hatching, the male birds were daily seen flying inland towards Lough Conn, with sand-eels in their bills to feed their mates. Lough Conn, however, was visited twice without our seeing any trace of the Sandwich Terns, the only members of the Laridæ met with being Black-headed Gulls and Common Terns. Our search for the breeding haunt having thus failed I gave it up for a time, but in May, 1857, I was told of a small lough upon which a number of small gulls bred, and which is situate near the residence of the late Mr. Gardiner, of Cloona, two miles from the town of Ballina, and about three miles from the estuary. This lough, nearly surrounded by a bog, is about twenty or thirty acres in extent, and has a wooded island in the centre, with a quantity of reeds and bulrushes at one end. On visiting the spot I found a large colony of Black-headed Gulls breeding amongst the reeds, and a smaller colony of the Sandwich Terns located on a low flat mud-bank scarcely above the level of the water. Some of these Terns had no nests to speak of, but had laid their eggs in a slight depression of the soil, thinly lined with a few blades of dried grass, and (as well as I can remember now) I think three was the average number of the eggs in each nest. When returning I brought five or six of the eggs back with me, and at that date (the last week in May) some were nearly hatched, and too far advanced for blowing, which shows that this species breeds much earlier than the smaller terns. The following winter and spring being unusually wet, the level of the lake was raised so high as to cover the mud-bank upon which the Terns had had their nests, and as the bank continued under water during