Plate CCCCIX. Fig. 2. Adult.
Bill about the length of the head, rather slender; wings a little
longer than the tail, which is deeply forked. Bill black, with part of
the base of the lower mandible, the edges of both, and their tips to
the length of five-twelfths of an inch, yellow; feet orange, claws
brown, toward the end yellow; a band of blackish-grey surrounding the
eye, and extending toward the nape; fore part of head, cheeks, and
upper part of throat, white; the rest of the upper and lower parts
light greyish-blue, excepting the axillar feathers, lower
wing-coverts, and rump, which are white; tail-coverts and tail
greyish-white; primary coverts and quills hoary, but the outer five
dusky grey on the inner web, toward the margin, and less so along the
shaft, and on the outer web; the shafts of all the quills and
tail-feathers white, as are the inner edges of the primaries and tips
of the secondaries, the inner excepted. This species has the bill
somewhat longer and more slender than that of Havell's Tern, and
differently coloured; the tarsus longer, and the lower parts of the
body of the same tint as the upper, whereas that species is white
beneath.
_Adult_, 16; wing, 10-10/12.
Great Egg Harbour and Long Island. Rare. Migratory.
Trudeau's Tern, Sterna Trudeaui, Aud. Orn. Biog. v. v. p. 125.