310 BULLETIN 113, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 



duras (Glover's Keef and Cay Dolores). North, formerly and per- 

 haps now, to southern Texas. Pacific birds are supposed to be sub- 

 specifically distinct and have been split into several subspecies. 



Breeding grounds protected in the following national reserva- 

 tion: In Florida, Tortugas Keys. 



Winter range. — Practically the same as the breeding range. 



Casual records. — One record for Bermuda (September 12, 1884). 



Egg dates. — Bahama Islands : Forty-three records. May 5 to July 

 1 ; twenty-two records. May 16 to June 2. West Indies and Florida : 

 Ten records, February 17 to July 6; five records, May 20 to June 24. 



Family RYNCHOPIDAE, Skimmers. 



RYNCHOPS NIGRA Linnaeus. 



BLACK SKIMMEB. 



HABITS. 



The coasts of Virginia and the Carolinas are fringed with chains 

 of low, sandy islands, many of them lying far out from the shores, 

 with broad, flat, sandy beaches on the ocean side, and often on the 

 inner side with extensive salt marshes which are intersected by 

 numerous creeks and shallow estuaries. Although practically worth- 

 less for human occupancy, these islands form ideal resorts for sca^- 

 eral species of water birds and shore birds. Cobb's Island, undoubt- 

 edly the most famous and perhaps the most typical of this class of 

 islands, has for many years been a popular resort for sportsmen and 

 bird lovers, though its bird population has been sadly depleted dur- 

 ing recent years. The countless thousands of least terns, which 

 once enlivened its sandy shores, have all disappeared into the ca- 

 pacious maw of the millinery trade. The gull-billed terns have been 

 nearly exterminated and the common terns much reduced in numbers 

 by the same agency. Only a few nests of each are still to be found 

 on the pebbly sand flats. The laughing gulls still breed in fair 

 numbers on the salt marshes, but they are persistently robbed by egg- 

 hunting fishermen, and the once populous breeding colonies of willets 

 have been nearly annihilated by sportsmen, who shoot the local 

 breeding birds as well as the migrants. Fortunately the black 

 skimmers are not regarded as game birds and their plumage is not 

 in demand for millinery purposes, so that they still frequent their 

 favorite breeding grounds in large numbers. 



When the rising tide flows in around the island, covering the outer 

 sand bars, driving the birds from their low-tide roosting and feed- 

 ing places and flooding the shallow estuaries, then the " flood gulls," 

 as they are called, may be seen skimming over the muddy shallows, 

 about the mouths of the creeks, or up into the narrow inlets, grace- 



