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The Least Tern is among the smallest of the long-winged flyers and an indescribably ethereal impression emanates from it in flight. Thus great interest was generated when this tern began to nest on the mainland beach of Mississippi Sound about 12 years ago. In 1980, Least Tern chicks died in numbers on the beach Jd this generated considerable comment and some bombast. An upstate ornithologist announced that poison in the food chain was the cause, but no poison has ever been found in the carcasses of the dead chicks or in the water. The mortality of Least Tern chicks was not caused by Red Tide or disease and by a simple process of exclusion fell to the hottest summer the author ever saw on the Gulf Coast in 51 years, with air temperatures up to 107T. INTRODUCTION The Least Tem, Stema albifrons, appears white in its flight over nesting beaches along the river valleys of North America and the Gulf beaches to Massachusetts, but it has light touches of gray, black and brown. It ranges south to Peru, Brazil, and the Antilles, and north to Scotland, the Baltic and the large rivers of India, China, Japan, Russia, the Caspian Sea, and Africa to Australia. It also nests on various sea beaches and is scattered world wide in that habitat except for the cold zones (Reilly 1968). It flies in a delicate manner, with its thinly tapered, swept back wings, and there is an indescribably ethereal impression given by these birds as they billow back and forth over their eggs and young. Even such a stern old observer as Oberholser (1973) says, “the Least Tern is extremely bouyant, swift and graceful.” Thus, when these fairy-like birds began some 10 years ago to nest on the sand beach of the Mississippi Sound mainland shore within a few yards of U.S. Highway 90, the front thoroughfare of Gulfport, Mississippi, this development aroused the interest of hundreds of people. Gunter (1957) reviewed the influence of temperate factors on marine organisms. Mammals and birds live at precise body temperatures that cannot vary much. Most poikilotherm organisms live within 4 to 7°F of the upper limit of ambient temperature that they can withstand, while the lower limit may be near freezing, 25°F or lower. For this reason, the trouts and related cold-water fishes in southem Canada and the northern United States sometimes die of heat stroke in natural waters.

Heat Death of Least Tern Chicks on the Gulfport, Mississippi, Beach in 1980