Roseate Tern - 1894

Sterna dougalli

Now only a rare visitor, but perhaps, formerly a regular summer visitor, and nesting on Skokholm Stack, where Mr. Mathias has informed us that some used to breed in company with the Common Terns.

Mr. Mathias, who knows this beautiful species well on wing, has several times (but not in recent years) seen Roseate Terns fishing off the east shore of Dale parish within Milford Haven. The disappearance of the Roseate Tern from the south-west of Pembrokeshire cannot be accounted for, as we have no belief that it was ever shot down or its nests robbed, and can only be set side by side with its vanishing from the Scilly Islands causelessly, and from other localities on our coasts that it used to visit. The latest Pembrokeshire example of this now rare bird that we can mention is one reported to us by the Rev. Clennell Wilkinson, rector of Castle Martin, a beautiful adult in perfect plumage, that was picked up dead some way inland in the neighbourhood of Pembroke, in 1885.

Mathew M.A. 1894, Birds of Pembrokeshire and it's Islands