A BI-MONTHLY MAGAZINE 

 DEVOTED TO THE STUDY AND PROTECTION OF BIRDS 



Official Organ of the Audubon Societies 



Vol. V July — August, 1903 No. 4 



The Bird -Life of Cobb's Island 



BY FRANK M. CHAPMAN 



With photographs from nature by the author 



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 Hfe -saving 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 life-saving 

 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 to-day the former is rare while 

 the two latter are unknown, and there are left as breeding birds Com- 

 mon, Forster's, and Gull-billed Terns, Laughing Gulls, Skimmers, Oyster- 

 catchers, Wilson's Plovers, Clapper Rails and Seaside Finches. Willet 

 have disappeared before spring shooting in what was actually their nesting 

 season. The Least Terns fell victims to the milliners, who greatly de- 

 creased the other species of Terns nesting on the island. The former 



