In Great Britain we find the Common Tern along the shores of the Channel and up the West coast as far as the Isle of Skye, and again from the Moray Firth down to Kent. In Ireland it is plentiful in the South. “Three species at least of the beautiful terns, well within my own time, bred freely in this country; but their colonies on the flats and the foreshores have been harried for eggs and birds so persistently, season after season, that they have ceased to exist as breeding places. A few hatch out in lonely shingle runs here and there on the coast lines; others have changed their breeding grounds for good. The ring-dotterels have suffered in the same way, but, from their different nesting habits nothing like so much as the terns have done. When dogs are trained for egg hunting, and the capture of young birds alive, without hurting them, is it to be wondered at if the poor birds shift elsewhere? The size of a place has nothing to do with its nesting capacities; if the conditions are favourable, there the birds will come in their seasons to settle down. If they are not interfered with they will come again, until at last you may count on their arrival almost to a day. One place I frequently visit, where the birds, water-fowl and waders have been protected for forty years, not by keepers or lookers, but by the people that pass that way, because the owner of a fine sheet of water desired that they might not be frightened. This is as it should be, yet for all that they are wild birds pure and simple, free to come and go just as they please, according as their inclinations move them.”[7] The Common Tern is 14·25 inches in length but its long wings and tail make it appear larger. The legs are red, the feet webbed. Beak red with a sharp point; crown and nape quite black; mantle a fine bluish grey. Throat and breast beautifully white; wing feathers darkish. Tail forked like that of the House Swallow. The longest, outer side feathers, which form the fork, are dark grey, the other tail feathers, and the rump white. The eye reddish-brown. THE BEAN GOOSE. (_Anser ségetum._) The Bean Goose visits us only in winter, for it breeds in the most northern portion of our hemisphere, whence it is driven to our milder regions by the extreme cold of winter. Here it waits for spring, then it hurries back to its breeding place on the coasts of the Northern Ocean. It lays seven to ten white eggs in its simply-formed nest in the inhospitable desolate land of its birth. When obliged to leave the nest it carefully covers up the eggs in order to preserve their warmth. These birds move southwards in great flocks towards autumn. Some of them come to us, and in many places cover the fields in swarms, and in the case of their settling constantly in the same places, they may do considerable harm by nibbling, tearing up and trampling over everywhere generally.