QUEER NESTING PLACE.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 296, 14 December 1928, Page 10

QUEER NESTING PLACE.

TERNS BREED IN HARBOUR.

HOME ON OLD STEAMER. RESENT THE CAMERA. The black-headed tern is a very careless bird about its domestic affairs. Public opinion among the tern people (as Kipling might call them) favours lonely islands away out in the Gulf, or along the coast. There the mother tern lays her eggs and brings up her brood But she does not do it after the loving and careful manner of the land birds, who seem to take a special delight in building the cosiest of nests for their offspring—even the homely sparrow going to no end of trouble, and providing the children with a very downy domicile, even for the short while * that they use it. The tern has no time for such effeminacy. She just drops her eggs anywhere, and never bothers to collect a stick or a feather to suggest an idea of home. You will see tern's eggs lying about in the most casual manner along the beach, or among the boulders. Evidently the drift to the towns has caught on in the tern world, for instead of hieing off to the lonely places of the Gulf when important domestic events are pending, a large proportion of the Auckland terns have taken to breeding right in the harbour. At present they have commandeered the old steamer Aupouri, and turned her decks into a rough sort of Karitane Home, or at least into a temporary sort of St. Helens. Their choice has evidently been made because of the loneliness of the steamer, as they are not disturbed by a watchman, as they would be on some of the coal hulks Ivingr out there in the reach between Northcote and Stanley t»oint on. the northern side of the harbour. The mothers of the flock lay their °»gs anywhere about the decks. Some choose the comparative security of a coil of rope, but many of them are content with bare boards, scuppers, or any other part of the decks. When the " Star " photographer went aboard yesterday to snap the families who are getting cheap lodgings on the steamer he did not excite much resent->Z™-Hfe. were full, and many engaging little balls of grey-brown fluflf clamoured incessantly for food.

Then the mothers took a violent dielike to the camera and the man behind it. As he focussed on the infant the mother and many of her friends flew wildly round his head, screaming violently, making wicked dives at his face, and pecking at his neck. As soon as ho moved away the hub-bub ceased and the different families went on with their occupations.

The black-headed tern, kahawai bird, or sea-swallow, as it is variously known, is a great fisher. Yachtsmen know it well. It has a habit of frequenting passages between islands, and if you see a flock of them hovering over the channel you know that there are kahawai about, and out come the trolling lines. It is not the kahawai, however, that the terns are after; it is the smaller fish, that are being chased by the larger ones. The tern gets its name sea-swal-low from its scissor-like tail, and name kahawai bird is a purely local one. Even if the tern is a careless sort of mother before the event, she certainly looks after the youngster when he arrives. On the Aupouri yesterday it was interesting to see a fussy mother come flying aboard from down stream somewhere, make straight to one of the grevbrown fluff, and neatly pass a small fish, something like a gudgeon, from her own bill into the squaking gap which represented the mouth of her infant.

It was amazing to see the different mothers pick out their individual offspring, but even more astonishing was the unerring instinct which led every mother to her own egg. Chickens may have some evidences of dissimilarity, but how does each mother recognise her particular egg?