64 TWO ATLANTIC COAST ISLANDS 



tims to the milliners, who greatly decreased the other species 

 of Terns nesting on the island. The former captain of the 

 life-saving station told me of 1,400 Least Terns being killed 

 in one day; while the captain of the station and Mr. E. B. 

 Cobb, owner of the island, informed me that when Terns 

 were first killed for millinery purposes they, with another 

 man, killed 2,800 birds in three days on and near Cobb 's 

 Island. The birds were packed in cracked ice and shipped to 

 New York for skinning ; ten cents being paid for each one. 



In July, 1902 (23-25), I visited Cobb's Island to secure 

 data, photographs and specimens with which to represent 

 its summer bird-life in a Habitat Group. At the same time, 

 it was proposed to study the Black Skimmer. Marvellously 

 graceful in the air, the Skimmer is so conspicuously ugly 

 when at rest, that not even the milliners consider it available 

 for alleged hat decoration; consequently it was spared 

 while its more beautiful neighbors, the .Terns, were slaugh- 

 tered, and it is numerous in favorable localities on the coast 

 from Virginia to Texas. 



But in spite of the Skimmer 's abundance, its conserva- 

 tism in the matter of habitat removes it from the field of ob- 

 servation of most ornithologists, and, at the time of which I 

 write, accounts of its habits could be found only in the works 

 of Wilson and Audubon. Neither of these remarkably keen 

 and sympathetic students of bird-life appears, however, to 

 have had an extended experience with the Skimmer during 

 the nesting season. Both state, for instance, that it lays only 

 three eggs ; whereas the full complement is four ; and, Wil- 

 son writes that the ' ' female sits on them only during the 

 night and in wet and stormy weather. " As I desired espe- 

 cially to secure photographs of the sitting bird, this question 

 of the day or night incubation was of importance. I made 

 inquiry, therefore, of ornithologists who had been among 

 Skimmers, but not one had ever seen a Skimmer on its nest. 

 Hence the life history of the Skimmer appeared to be an un- 

 usually attractive subject for investigation. Unique in 



