Reports of Field Agents 281 



wide and only a few feet al)()ve high water mark. This island appears on the 

 chart as a sand shoal with four feet of water over it at low tide, but during 

 recent years it has been elevated to its present position, though it might be 

 badly washed if a heavy gale should come during the spring tides. It lies 114 

 miles ofT shore, well outside of all the other islands. A colony of Royal and 

 Cabot's Terns had attempted to breed earlier in the season on South West 

 Key, a similar low, sandy island, but had been washed off; probably the same 

 birds were now making a second attempt at Grand Cochere. By counting 

 the nests in a measured space and measuring the extent of the largest colony, 

 I figured that it contained about three thousand five hundred nests, mostly 

 Royal Terns, but with a fair number of Cabot's Terns. There were several 

 other smaller breeding colonies on the island. I estimated that the total breed- 

 ing population of the island was made up as follows: Royal Terns, 4,000 [jairs; 

 Cabot's Terns, 1,000 pairs; Black Skimmers, 300 pairs; Caspian Terns, 40 

 pairs; and Laughing Gulls, 10 pairs, making a total of over 10,000 breeding 

 birds. With the exception of a few nests of Laughing Gulls containing young 

 and one young Royal Tern, all the nests contained eggs, mostly heavily 

 incubated, judging from the few that we collected. The Caspian Terns were 

 in a compact colony by themselves at one end of the island. This was the only 

 colony of this species that we found, though we saw a few scattering pairs 

 of them elsewhere, breeding with the Laughing Gulls and Black Skimmers 

 on the small islands. The Royal and Cabot's Terns were incubating almost 

 universally on one egg each, although a few nests contained two eggs each. 

 Captain Sprinkle told me that they usually lay two eggs for the first brood, 

 but only one egg each on their second attempt at nesting. About thirty 

 Man-o' -war-birds were perched on an old wreck, a large flock of Brown Peli- 

 cans — perhaps two hundred — frequented the sand-bars, and thousands of 

 Black Terns came in at night to roost on the beaches. 



June 20 and 21 we spent at Battledore island, which has been very much 

 reduced in size by the washing away of the sand and shell beaches, leaving 

 only three or four acres of high shell beach enclosing a small marsh and a 

 muddy bay. Lawrence Pablo was stationed here as keeper, living with his 

 family in a small schooner. He claimed to have kept all gunners and eggers 

 away, and the island shows signs of being regularly patrolled. It was certamly 

 thickly populated with about five thousand pairs of Laughing Gulls, one 

 thousand pairs of Black Skimmers, fifty pairs of Louisiana Herons, thirty 

 pairs of Forster's Terns and twenty-five pairs of Common Terns. The latter 

 were apparently not breeding here, but all the others were and had been 

 successful in hatching their young, or were incubating on full sets of eggs. A 

 pair of Caspian Terns were seen here, and they were probably breeding. 



On June 22, we visited Hog island, which had been broken up into several 

 sections by the washing away of beaches and portions of the marshes. There 

 were a few small shell beaches left, but most of the area was occupied by salt 



