"The Tern," says Mr. F. M. Woodruff, of the Chicago Academy of Sciences,
"is the only representative of the long-winged swimmers which commonly
nests with us on our inland fresh water marshes, arriving early in May
in its brooding plumage of sooty black. The color changes in the autumn
to white, and a number of the adult birds may be found, in the latter
part of July, dotted and streaked here and there with white. On the
first of June, 1891, I found a large colony of Black Terns nesting on
Hyde Lake, Cook County, Illinois. As I approached the marsh a few birds
were seen flying high in the air, and, as I neared the nesting site, the
flying birds gave notes of alarm, and presently the air was filled with
the graceful forms of this beautiful little bird. They circled about me,
darting down to within a few feet of my head, constantly uttering a
harsh, screaming cry. As the eggs are laid upon the bare ground, which
the brownish and blackish markings so closely resemble, I was at first
unable to find the nests, and discovered that the only way to locate
them was to stand quietly and watch the birds. When the Tern is passing
over the nest it checks its flight, and poises for a moment on quivering
wings. By keeping my eyes on this spot I found the nest with very little
trouble. The complement of eggs, when the bird has not been disturbed,
is usually three. These are laid in a saucer shaped structure of dead
vegetation, which is scraped together, from the surface of the wet,
boggy ground. The bird figured in the plate had placed its nest on the
edge of an old muskrat house, and my attention was attracted to it by
the fact that upon the edge of the rat house, where it had climbed to
rest itself, was the body of a young dabchick, or piedbilled grebe,
scarcely two and one-half inches long, and not twenty-four hours out of
the egg, a beautiful little ball of blackish down, striped with brown
and white. From the latter part of July to the middle of August large
flocks of Black Terns may be seen on the shores of our larger lakes on
their annual migration southward."
The Rev. P. B. Peabody, in alluding to his observation of the nests
of the Tern, says: "Amid this floating sea of aquatic nests I saw an
unusual number of well constructed homes of the Tern. Among these was
one that I count a perfect nest. It rested on the perfectly flat
foundation of a small decayed rat house, which was about fourteen
inches in diameter. The nest, in form, is a truncated cone (barring
the cavity), was about eight inches high and ten inches in diameter.
The hollow--quite shallow--was about seven inches across, being thus
unusually large. The whole was built up of bits of rushes, carried to
the spot, these being quite uniform in length--about four inches." After
daily observation of the Tern, during which time he added much to his
knowledge of the bird, he pertinently asks: "Who shall say how many
traits and habits yet unknown may be discovered through patient watching
of community-breeding birds, by men enjoying more of leisure for such
delightful studies than often falls to the lot of most of us who have
bread and butter to earn and a tiny part of the world's work to
finish?"