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GULL-BILLED TERN.

Sterna Anglica, Mond.

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Le Hirondelle de Mer Hansel of Temm.?

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Tuis rare species of Tern was first made known from specimens obtained in this country by Colonel Montagu
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and was described and figured by him in the Supplement to his Ornithological Dictionary. The bill is

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wholly black, about an inch and a half long, thick, strong, and angulated on the under mandible, at the
symphysis or junction of the two portions, in which particular it resembles the Gulls, and this Tern may be
considered as a link between the species of the two genera. The upper part of the head, occiput and hatte
of the neck are black in summer; all the upper parts cinereous ; outer tail-feathers and all the under parts
of the body white ; the first five quill-feathers are tipped with greyish black, part of the inner webs white ;

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legs long, exceeding one inch and a half, nearly black; toes long, claws almost straight. In the winter 19)
x | plumage the head is white, with dusky markings about the eyes. Young birds have the head, back and Oe
S wings mottled with ash colour, light brown and dusky. ‘The sexes are alike in plumage, but the female is ha
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It seems to be now a very general, but not a universal opinion, that the Sterna Anglia of Montagu is

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a not the same bird as the Sterna Anglica of Temminck’s Manuel d Ornithologie, but that this latter bird is

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identical with the Sterna aranea of Wilson and the Marsh Tern of Peale. We have had no opportunity of

examining American specimens of this rare Tern, but examples brought from India by Colonel W. H. Sykes
were compared, and found to correspond exactly with Colonel Montagu’s birds in the British Museum, both
in their winter and summer plumage ; and that the Sterna Anglca of Montagu exists in the Dukhun does

 

not therefore admit of a doubt. Colonel Sykes remarks, that with the aspect, length of wing, lazy flight, and
habits of the Tern, this bird has a bill approximating to that of the Gull, and not quite identical with the bill
of Viralea, under which genus Mr. Stephens has arranged our dnglica in his Ornithological portion of
Shaw’s Zoology, vol. xii. p. 174.

Numerous fishes were found in the stomachs of the examples of this bird killed in the Dukbun, and this
fact is in accordance with the remarks of Charles Lucian Bonaparte, Prince of Musignano, who in his
Observations on the Nomenclature of Wilson’s Ornithology, states that the habits of the two species of
Tern, Sterna Anglica and S. aranea, are very different ; the former is confined to the sea-shore, and feeds
sometimes on fishes, while the latter 1s generally found in marshes, and feeds exclusively on insects.

The Gull-billed Tern is said to frequent, and even to be common on the eastern parts of the European
continent, particularly during the summer, where it lays three or four oval-shaped olive-brown eggs, spotted
with two shades of darker brown.

We have figured a bird in the summer plumage and of the natural size.