Читать книгу Birds of Manitoba - Ernest Thompson Seton - Страница 20

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Common summer resident on the large lakes; feeding largely on small fish. Winnipeg: Summer resident; tolerably common (Hine). One taken on Lake Winnipeg, June 16 (Humicalt). Breeding on Lake Manitoba, Waterhen River, and Lake Winnipegosis (Macoun). Portage la Prairie: Tolerably common during spring and autumn migrations; a few remain about Lake Manitoba during the summer (Nash).

There are numbers of terns breeding annually at Shoal Lake; some of them on small, gravelly islands. These form their nests by removing the gravel, making hollows in which they lay their eggs; others of them take up their abode among the reeds and rushes. Here, with great industry and ingenuity, they make their nests of reeds and grass, fixing them in their place to keep them from floating away. When in Lake Winnipeg, in 1862, I observed that the terns which occupied sandy and gravelly islands made their nests as those do on the gravelly islands in Shoal Lake; and the terns found on the rocky island on the east side of the lake chose for their nests depressions and clefts in the surface of the rocks. These they line carefully with moss; three or four eggs being laid in each nest; thus exhibiting a remarkable example of instinct, which teaches these little creatures that their eggs laid in soft sand and in loose gravel are safe without any lining to protect them, but that when laid in hollows and clefts of rocks, lining to protect their eggs and young from injury by these hard, and at night cold, materials would be indispensable. (D. Gunn.)