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(Sterna minuta, Linn.—La petite Hirondelle de Mer, Buff.)
MEASURES about eight inches in length, and nineteen in breadth, and weighs a little more than two ounces. It looks like the former species in miniature; is equally, if not more delicately elegant in its plumage and general appearance, and its manners and habits are much the same; but it is not nearly so numerous, or so widely dispersed. It differs from the Common Tern in having the black patch on its head houndered by a white line on the front of the brow, and over each eye, in the tail being wholly white, and, in proportion to the size of the bird, much shorter or less forked, and in the bill and the feet being more inclined to orange or yellow. Nothing can exceed the clean, clear, and glossy whiteness of its close-set feathers on the under parts of the body; but the upper plumage is of a plain sober lead-coloured grey. The egg is an inch and a half in length, of a dirty yellowish brown, dashed all over with reddish blotches.
This bird is met with in the summer months on all our coasts, also about the Baltic, in some parts of Russia, the river Irtish in Siberia, the Black and Caspian Seas, and in America near New York, &c. In Belon's time "the fishermen floated a cross of wood, in the middle of which was fastened a small fish for bait, with limed twigs stuck to the four corners, on which the bird darting, was entangled by the wings."
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