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Range (More or less general)

Of more or less general distribution throughout North America, breeding in the east locally from Texas northward through the Mississippi Valley to St. Clair Flats and Manitoba-recorded from Lake Mistassini-apparently not breeding on the Atlantic coast north of Virginia, but wandering irregularly to Massachusetts.

Washington, rare and irregular T. V. Long Island, rare T. V. in fall. Nest, of seaweed, flags, or weeds on a slight elevation in grassy marshes. Eggs, three, very variable, olive-gray, or olive brownish ashy, more rarely whitish or buff, heavily marked with chocolate, 1.80 × 1.30. Dr. Brewer, writing of Mr. Ridgway's experience with this species on Cobb's Island, Virginia, where it was found breeding in numbers, says: "It was only less abundant than the Anglica [= nilotica], and quite as numerous as the hirundo, frequenting especially grassy marshes, in which it nests. He found it pre-eminently a marsh Tern. It nested in company with, or in close proximity to, colonies of the