Volume 2

The feathered tribes of the British Islands / By Robert Mudie.

  • Mudie, Robert, 1777-1842.
Date:
1835
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The feathered tribes of the British Islands / By Robert Mudie. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    399/425 (page 374)
    THE ROSEATE TERN. {Sterna Dougalii.) The roseate tern belongs to a different character of locality than most of those that have been noticed. With the ex¬ ception of the lesser tern, they are all, to a considerable extent, marsh birds, and even that resorts to shores not far from the marshes. The marsh ones can be traced into the eastern marshes by the lines of the rivers of central Europe; and they do not spread themselves round the shores, or seem peculiarly attached to the sea. The species under consideration appears to depend more on the sea, tidal, or river waters, to nestle upon places that are drier, and to find its food more in the broad waters. It was first noticed on the islands in the estuary of the Clyde, which are near a long extent of sandy shores, and where the number of small animals moved about by the tide, as well as of the fry of different sorts of fishes, is known to be great. On the continent, the same species is said to range on the sandy shores of Norway, and along the southern shores of the Baltic, and to breed upon the haofs, or long banks of sand and shingle, which are found near the mouths of all the larger rivers that discharge their waters into that sea. These are the situations to which the common tern is most partial; and as, when the late Dr. Macdougall found this species, he found it living in peace among vast numbers of the common tern, there seems every reason to conclude that the two may be found pretty generally together, though, as has been often the case with similarly-mannered birds, and one species more numerous than the other, the rarer one has been overlooked. Length about fifteen inches, wings short, reaching to only within two inches of the end of the tail; feet orange; bill yellow at the base, black at the tip ; cap on the head and nape, black, upper part grey; the under part white, and a roseate tint on the neck, breast, and belly; some of the quills with the webs black or hoary, but all with the shafts white.