COBB'S ISLAND 



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, ten- 

 anted only by an occasional fisherman or the crews of life- 

 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, which 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 Eoyal 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, Common, Forster's, and 

 Gull-billed Terns, Laughing Gulls, Skimmers, Oyster-catch- 

 ers, 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 vie- 



