ROSEATE TERN.
STERNA DOUG ALU, Montagu.
Sterna dougallii, Montagu, Orn. Diet. Suppl. (1813) ; Macg.
v. p. G-l-8; Hewitson, ii. p. 479.
Sterna dougalli, Naum. x. p. 7 8 ; Yarr. cd. 1, iii. p. 511 ;
Dresner, viii. p. 273.
Sterne de Dongall, French ; Donga/t's Seeschivalbe, German.
This very beautiful species, formerly a tolerably
common summer visitor to several localities on our
Islands, has become of late years a decidedly rare
British bird. My friend Mr. Howard Saunders, in his
excellent ' Manual,' attributes the present scarcity of
this Tern in our country mainly to the increase of the
Common Tern, a stronger-billed and altogether more
robust bird, and informs us that he has been assured
that three colonies of the Roseate have successively
given way to the former Tern on the coast of Brittany
in the course of a few years. I saw a very few of the
present species about one of the islets of the Scilly
group in IS52 ; my attention was drawn to them at
once by the difference between their note and that of