The little, or lesser tern, is a third less than the common species in size, measuring only eight inches in length. The colour is nearly the same in both birds, except that the under parts in the little tern are pure white, and the bill orange—instead of coral-red. The voice differs somewhat, being thinner and shriller in tone; otherwise the language is the same. The flight is more wavering. This species is much less numerous than the arctic and common terns; in its habits it closely resembles them, breeding in communities, sometimes in company with the other kinds. When breeding alongside of the common tern its nests, as a rule, are placed a little apart and nearer to the water. The nest is a slight depression in the loose sand and gravel, sometimes with a few bents and fragments of dry seaweed for lining; the eggs are two or three in number, of a light stone-colour, spotted with grey and brown. In size and colour they closely resemble the eggs of the ringed plover. This tern, like the others, hovers screaming overhead when its breeding-ground is intruded on; but recovers from its anxiety only too quickly, for no sooner has the intruder got a little distance away than the bird drops down directly on to its nest. When the female is incubating the male brings food for her, and Mr. Trevor-Battye has described in his ‘Pictures in Prose’ the pretty way in which the birds play with each other before the fish is delivered. ‘Returned from his quest, the bird with a fish in his bill circles round and round, and lower and lower, over his mate, and presently drops down beside her. Then he begins a series of extraordinary evolutions. With head thrown back, wings drooping, and tail cocked straight up, he struts—no other word expresses it—he struts about in front of his mate.... He jumps at his mate, as if daring her to take the fish. Then he will fly round for a bit, only to settle again and repeat the play. I have seen on several occasions a female “chit,” before she had settled down on her eggs, get up, fly off, settle on the shingle off and on for a considerable time, followed persistently by her fish-bearing partner, but always avoiding him, as if coquetting or really annoyed. Sooner or later the fish is always relinquished, or, as I suspect, taken by the female bird.’
In Norfolk the little terns are called chits, or chit-perles.
Sandwich Tern.
Sterna cantiaca.
Bill and feet black; upper part of the head black; mantle pearl-grey; rump, tail, throat, and under parts white; the breast suffused with rose. Length, sixteen inches.
This is the largest of the British terns, being as much superior as the little tern is inferior in size to the arctic and common species. In its manner of flight and language it differs somewhat from the others. At a distance the under parts appear to be of a snowy whiteness; in the captive or dead bird the white plumage is seen to be suffused with an evanescent delicate pink colour. On the wing the Sandwich tern does not look so graceful and beautiful as the smaller species: the flight is heavier, straighter, unwavering, the wings beating more rapidly. Its scream is shorter, less inflected, and has a harsh and even grating sound.
This tern suffers much from the persecutions of the egg-collector, as well as of that base kind of sportsman who is allowed to amuse himself in August and September by slaughtering terns. On the Farne Islands, which are protected during the breeding season, there now exists a considerable colony of Sandwich terns, numbering about one thousand pairs, and a few smaller colonies are found on the coasts of Scotland and Ireland, and on some of the lakes of those countries. On the Farnes the birds breed on one of the islands on a flat surface overgrown with sea-campion, and here their nests are placed so close together that it is difficult at times to walk over the ground without treading on the nests containing eggs or young birds. The eggs are two or three in number, and are stone-colour with a yellow tinge, thickly spotted with grey or brown.
Besides the five species described, there are eight terns set down in the books as British. Of these, the Caspian tern, gull-billed tern, and black tern, are described as ‘irregular visitors,’ and come in small numbers; the whiskered tern, white-winged black tern, sooty tern, Scopoli’s sooty tern, and noddy, are all rare stragglers, the last three from the tropics. The black tern (Hydrochelidon nigra) was in reality a British bird in former times, a summer visitor, breeding in immense numbers in the fens and marshes in some of the eastern counties. It bred ‘in myriads’ in Norfolk as late as 1818, and, in diminishing numbers, down to 1835. ‘Drainage and persecution’ caused the destruction of this graceful species.
