ON THE OCCURRENCE OF THE SMALLER SOOTY TERN
AT THE MOUTH OF THE THAMES.
By Howard Saunders, F.L.S., F.Z.S.
Some months ago Mr. E. Bidwell, whose name will be familiar to readers of 'The Zoologist,' and who is unremitting in his researches for rarities in the markets and neighbourhood of London, asked me to examine a specimen of a Tern in the possession of a local birdstuffer, named Barton, residing near the West India Docks. It proved to be an adult example of the Smaller Sooty Tern, Sterna anæstheta, Scop., a species not hitherto recorded even as a straggler to the British or indeed to the European coasts, and it bore every appearance of having been recently mounted "from the flesh." Mr. Bidwell subsequently purchased it, and at his request I exhibited it at the meeting of the Zoological Society at Hanover Square on the 6th February, 1877.[1] The following letter, addressed to him by the son of the man from whom he purchased it, contains all the information that has yet been obtained as regards the locality where the specimen was procured:—
"The Tern you purchased of my father was brought to him in the flesh by one of the Trinity-House men who had just returned from duly on board a lightship at the mouth of the Thames in September, 1875. My father skinned the bird and brought it to me to stuff. The skin was perfectly fresh then, and portions of the flesh were adhering to it. I cleaned the skin and set it up."
Mr. Bidwell and I interviewed both father and son on the matter, and there does not seem to be the slightest ground for doubting that the specimen in question really was obtained somewhere at the mouth of the Thames as stated. The man who brought it in returned to his duty, and unless he reads this or revisits either of the Bartons with some other bird "out of the common," we shall probably remain in ignorance as to the precise lightship where the bird was taken, doubtless during the equinoctial gales, as it was obtained in September.
There are at present three known species of the Sooty Tern group, the largest and best known of which is—
Sterna fuliginosa, Gm. Syst. Nat., i., p. 605 (1788). Its habitat may be described as intertropical, or at most between
- ↑ See: "Proceedings" in The Zoologist, 3rd series, vol. 1, issue 3, p. 113 (Wikisource-ed.)
