ring the mating season in May
last.

Alas, that the Robin will visit us in diminished numbers in the
approaching spring. He has not been so common for a year or two as
he was formerly, for the reason that the Robins died by thousands of
starvation, owing to the freezing of their food supply in Tennessee
during the protracted cold weather in the winter of 1895. It is indeed
sad that this good Samaritan among birds should be defenseless against
the severity of Nature, the common mother of us all. Nevertheless the
return of the birds, in myriads or in single pairs, will be welcomed
more and more, year by year, as intelligent love and appreciation of
them shall possess the popular mind.

[Illustration: BLACK TERN.
Mother and Young with Eggs.]

THE BLACK TERN.

"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, whe