Page:Bird-lore Vol 05.djvu/122



The Bird-Life of Cobb’s Island

BY FRANK M, CHAPMAN

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THE Atlantic coast, from New Jersey to North Carolina, is bordered by an outlying chain of islets. Many of them are mere sand

bars, more or less grown with coarse grasses, and. on their western sides, fringed by marshes which reach out into the bays separating them from the mainland.

Useless for agricultural purposes, these islands have a high commercial value only when they have become the sites of summer resorts; but when they have not suffered from an irruption of hotels and cottages they are. as a rule, tenanted only by an occasional ﬁsherman or the crews of lifesaving stations. whose presence does not materially alter their primeval conditions.

Lacking the natural foes of birds which exist on the mainland. these barren islets make ideal breeding»grounds for birds. who find on them the isolation their peculiar nesting habits require, while the surrounding waters furnish them an abundant supply of food.

In all this chain of bird homes probably none has been better known to ornithologists than Cobb‘s Island, on the Virginia coast, north of Cape Charles. Seven miles long, it has been occupied by man only at the extreme southern end: a small sportsman‘s club-house and a litersaving station being now its only dwellings.

Twenty years ago Willet and Least Terns‘ in large numbers, and Royal Terns bred on Cobb‘s Island, but towlay the former is rare while the two latter are unknown, and there are left as breeding birds Come rnon, Forster's. aml Gull—billed 'I‘erns, Laughing Gulls, Skimmers, ysterr catchers, Wilson's Plovers, Clapper Rails and Seaside Finches. Willet have disappeared before spring shooting in what was actually their nesting season, The Least ’I‘erns fell victims to the milliners, who greatly de» creased the other species of Terms nesting on the island. The former