Least Tern

Least Tern
Sterna minuta, Linnaeus [now Sternula antillarum]
Octavo edition, plate 439

“[O]nce in the middle of June, while wading through the quick-sands of Bayou Sara in Louisiana, I came to a high and dry sand-bar where I picked up several eggs belonging to three pairs of birds of this species. . . . While travelling, their light but firm flight is wonderfully sustained; and on hearing and seeing them on such occasions, one is tempted to believe them to be the happiest of the happy. They seem as if marshaled and proceeding to a merry-making, so gaily do they dance along.”

John James Audubon, Birds of America (New York: J.J. Audubon; Philadelphia: J. B. Chevalier, 1840-1844), vol. 7, p. 120.

View bird in National Audubon Society Field Guide for North American Birds.