Virginia Bird Homes of Beach and Marsh
. . . with a step I stand
On the firm-packed sand,
Free
By a world of marsh that borders a world of sea.
LANIER.
THE fame of the region had traveled afar. Its distances were impressive, its sea-beaches magnificent, its marshes the very symbol of the infinite. But these were not the reasons for its renown. It was a land of birds, -- birds of sea and shore, of kinds not easy to find, -- rich both as to numbers and variety. Winnowing gulls and darting terns of several kinds laid their eggs on sand and marsh, and their excitable colonies added a spectacular interest to the landscape. The singular and remarkable Black Skimmer was there in all its glory. Shore-birds, some of them nesting,
could be seen at their best. The salt marshes teemed with Clapper Rails, or Marsh Hens; Ospreys and Eagles built their huge nests in the strips of woods; Great Blue Herons, long of neck and limb, plied their fishing-trade and nested in colonies somewhere in the vicinity. The fact, too, that the region was one of sea islands added to its interest, for there is a sort of romantic fascination about an island. Bird-students from time to time had visited it, and their accounts were always glowing.
To be definite, this favored locality comprises the islands which lie off the northern peninsula of Virginia. Of these, Cobb's Island has been the most celebrated, but there are several others that are of equal interest. These islands are from two to four miles from the mainland, long narrow strips, parallel with the shore, and almost joined together, extending for many miles. The backbone of each island is a ridge of sandy loam, usually covered with woods of tall pine. On the ocean side are fine, broad sand-beaches, while in the rear is a vast salt marsh, cut up by creeks innumerable. The whole region is a veritable Rehoboth, where the traveler will find no lack of room.
When the time came that my zeal would brook no further delay in seeing these things for myself, I was unable to find another of like mind and with the necessary time at his disposal. Yet, desirable and agreeable as is a congenial companion on such a trip, its pleasure is not spoiled by one's being alone. Anticipation keeps one in a pleasant day-dream, and realization is sufficiently absorbing to make one forget all else.
On this occasion there was no time for lonely reflection. On evening late in June, bestowing myself in a sleeper berth, ere the late train left Jersey City, I dreamed delightfully of the birds, and awoke early in the morning not long before
I reached my destination at Cape Charles, Virginia. In a few moments I was talking over the telephone with Captain Hitchens of the Smith's Island life-saving station, my host, who was to meet me and sail me across. Such modernizing of the conditions of the supposedly lonely and retired sea islands hardly seemed in keeping with the purpose of my journey. But after a darky boy had driven me twelve miles in a livery team, and the genial keeper had sailed me four miles across the bay to his island home, my hopefulness returned. Aside from the abodes of the keepers of the lighthouse and life-saving station, the government buildings, there was not other human habitation. The tall towers of the new lighthouse on the bay side, 192 feet high, and of the old abandoned one nearly undermined by the ocean, almost as tall, showed up over the sea, flats, and marsh for many a mile. What a difference the telephone makes in the lives of these otherwise isolated families I could vividly realize, as I heard the keeper with whom I stayed "call up" in the morning the various other islands stations along the coast and chat with their keepers about the weather and the occurrences of the day or night. How different from the so-called good old times!
The first look from the station southward down the broad beach told eloquently of the hopeless resistance of these sea islands to the onslaughts of the ocean. Within the memory of man their shores were a mile farther out to sea. The spot occupied by the station was then in the midst of a pine forest. Now the buildings are all but undermined by the waves which storms drive up around them. From the very beach rise an array of decaying stubs and stumps, a warning to the pines behind them of what will soon be their fate.
Somewhere I had received the impression that the conditions of bird-life around my head quarters would be comparable to those of Noah's ark. Really I had almost expected
to gaze upon fluttering multitudes out of my bedroom window. But I was soon undeceived, and I found myself next morning trudging up the beach northward, weighted down with a backload of impedimenta, under the ardor of the late June sunshine. For a mile the way was past the pine-tract, which contained many great Osprey's nest, conspicuous as hay-mows in the tree-tops. Then came the sandy beach, unrelieved by any background save that of the low, interminable salt marsh. A tramp of miles upon the sand may be wearisome and monotonous, or not, according to the circumstances. When breezes blow free and the waves are flowing, when shore-birds pipe their clear, mellow calls, when sea-birds flit gracefully by and plunge into the brine, one forgets his burdens and feels as free as they.
Expecting such conditions, I plodded along, and was rewarded. After about three miles I began to hear the sounds
of bird-flutes, and pairs of demure little Wilson's Plovers ran pattering before me along the shingle. Some louder, more incisive cries came from a couple of Oyster-catchers, large and wary shore-birds that probably had young in the vicinity. A mile or two farther along I began to approach a flock of good-sized birds whose sooty black plumage showed up with startling contrast against the dazzling glare of the sand upon which they were resting. Presently they took to wing and came dashing toward me like a pack of hounds in full cry. Darting past, they revealed their white under parts and great carmine bills, the lower mandible projecting beyond the upper one. This most singular bird is the Black Skimmer. Were there nothing else picturesque in the landscape, these would suffice and would furnish inducement enough for the trip down into old Virginia.
About a dozen pairs of them were nesting at this particular spot. By threes and fours their rather large white eggs, handsomely marked with black, were readily seen lying in hollows in the dry sand above high-water mark. They make no nest whatever, save to scratch out a little round depression, which is similar to the numerous wallows where the birds have been squatting to bask in the sun. A few hundred yards beyond was another group of perhaps twenty nests, and so these groups recurred, as I continued my way along the seemingly endless beach.
It was a lively and beautiful scene. Parties of Skimmers were flying about in all directions, some across the sand, other bands close over the surface of the ocean just outside the white line of the lazily breaking surf. One moment they would wheel and look like snowy terns, then immediately they would become as black as crows, according as they presented their lower or upper parts. But their cries! Sometimes one would suddenly dash by me and utter, almost in
my ear, a veritable shriek, loud enough to startle one greatly, if taken unawares. More often the cry was a reiteration of sounds which reminded me of the violent sobbing of a child, made by drawing in the breath. They were anxious about their eggs; indeed it would sound as though they were fairly heart-broken. If they really suffered as much as their curious remonstrance seemed to imply, I should have felt positively guilty in subjecting them to such outrageous indignity by prying into their domestic privacy and happiness. I called them "the sobbing birds," and they darted about and sobbed their hearts away as long as I stayed near their nests. As they "sobbed," I could see their bills, like pairs of great shears, open and shut, as though, in flying by, they would snip off my ears. Flying low over the water, they seem to shear it as they quickly, in passing, pick up fish or other marine creatures from the surface.
To photograph them in flight successfully requires a
camera of the reflecting, or "reflex," type. Such at this time I did not possess. Focusing upon a certain point, I snapped a dozen times as the birds passed the exact spot. Though I am called a good shot with the shot-gun, I actually in this case did not "hit" a single bird and get it on the plate. All the flight pictures I have secured of Skimmers were taken in a subsequent year, before the nesting-season, when the birds were quite wary, and had me to great disadvantage.
But I did manage to photograph them upon their nests. One way was with the telephoto lens at quite a distance. This, however, secured only a small and not very satisfactory picture. So I tried placing the camera close to a nest, to make the exposure by a thread from a distance. This did not work, as the eggs were freshly laid, and the birds not very anxious to incubate. So I left small heaps of seaweed near certain of the nests, and had no trouble next day in securing all the pictures I required. After the camera was properly set, and covered with the weed, and I had lain down upon the sand at some distance, the bird would soon return and alight about a rod from the nest. After a few moments hesitation she would patter over to the eggs and settle down upon them, always facing the wind. All I had to do then was to pull the thread, and then change plates and try again, if I wished another picture.
Along these reaches of sand many terns were also nesting, laying their three eggs -- smaller than those of the Skimmer, and with a darker drab ground-color -- in hollows of the sand or among shells and pebbles, usually with a little lining of straw, or at least of chips of shell. Wherever I went bands of terns were hovering overhead, with piercing cries. Most of them were the Common Tern, but quite a few were of the Southern species known as the Marsh or Gull-billed Tern. Both are very similar in color, -- white, with pearl-gray
backs, and black cap and wing-tips, -- except that the former species has an orange bill, the latter a black one. The nests were scattered irregularly about and usually contained three eggs.
The great salt marsh back of the narrow strip of sand was meanwhile offering its allurements. Willets were flying about with loud outcries, distressed lest I should find their young. A flock of Laughing Gulls -- so called from their laughter-like cacklings -- were preening their feathers by a pool on the marsh's edge. The occasional "cluck, cluck" of some Marsh Hen, or Clapper Rail, invisible in the grass, bespoke a new wonder of which I desired to know more. Although there are doubtless tens of thousands of these peculiar birds on all these great marshes, I learned to my chagrin that it was by no means easy to find a nest. Two hours' hard tramping over the sticky and treacherous expanse failed to reward me with an occupied nest. Two were discovered from which the young had gone. They were neat, saucer-shaped
platforms of dry stems, built in tussocks just above the reach of the tides which flow up all over the marsh, and were canopied over by the grass in a very pretty manner. At one time I caught sight of a little black young rail, which led me a sorry chase over a soft mud-flat, greatly to the detriment of my personal appearance. I had almost caught it, I thought, when suddenly, as though by magic, it faded from my sight amid a few sparse blades of marsh grass. Oh! But I was thirsty that day! It was blazing hot, and the marsh seemed like a furnace. After drinking the last of the precious water, I found some relief in a dip in the ocean. Then came an eight-mile tramp. Next day the keeper provided me with a horse and tipcart for the same jaunt. This time I took plenty of water, but, in an evil hour, I made the horse trot upon the apparently smooth sand-beach. Everything on board the springless cart began to leap into the air. A hole was chipped in the bottle, and nearly all the water had leaked out ere I knew it. Only about half a pint was saved by holding the wreck of the bottle in my hand as I drove, and I had another thirsty day of it.
The numerous Laughing Gulls were not nesting in these particular marshes, and to locate them I scoured the bays and marshes far and near in a sail-boat with the keeper. Away out near the entrance of Chesapeake Bay lie a group of small islands, upon one of which is a U. S. Quarantine station, about as isolated a location as one could well find. Here, upon the wide flats, were Laughing Gulls by the hundreds, consorting with Black Skimmers and Common Terns. But what amazed me most, as I landed upon a low sand-bar of an island, was to find scores and scores of the Black Tern, in full breeding plumage, hovering overhead, darting down at us, and acting exactly as they do out in the sloughs of North Dakota when one approaches their nests. The strange
thing is that they are not known to breed in eastern North America, though they occur as migrants. Unfortunately there had been a high tide which had washed the key clean of all nests and eggs, certainly of Black Skimmers and Common Terns, and probably of the Black Terns also. I noticed one little hollow, lined with weed, which looked like one of their nests.
On another islet, -- this one marshy, -- a dozen miles to the northward of this, I finally found my first nest of the Marsh Hen. First of all, in landing there, I discovered several nests of the Forester's Tern, mere hollows in piles of dry eel-grass drifted up on the marsh grass. One of these, which had the usual three eggs, I photographed, and with it the female bird in the act of alighting. This was done by setting the camera upon the tripod and pulling the thread from hiding in some
long grass. A few days later I returned to show the nest to a friend. As we stood by it, I caught sight of a gleam of white, and there was a nest with eleven eggs of the Marsh Hen, skillfully concealed under the canopied grass. I had placed my tripod directly over it, and then gone away without detecting its presence.
Stepping back from this nest a few feet, I suddenly flushed the mother bird, which I had almost trodden upon. So confident are they in their protective coloration and surroundings that they are almost fearless of dull-eyed man. The day before this I had waded out in a marsh at high tide to a little hummock and, standing upon it, clapped my hands to start up a Willet which had alighted out beyond. Upon this up jumped a Marsh Hen almost from between my legs. It, too, had taken refuge from the tide and did not intend to yield its ground for any ordinary alarm. Some times I saw them, when suddenly flushed, fly straight out into the bay and alight upon the water, where they would swim like ducks.
Despite all accounts, I did not find the Laughing Gulls' nesting-grounds till I extended my wanderings to the vicinity of Cobb's Island. Meanwhile I had found and photographed a rookery of Great Blue Herons on the mainland. As we approached a little marsh island in our sail-boat, bands of hovering, cackling gulls gave assurance of certain success. The very first thing one of the men saw, on jumping from the boat, was a Marsh Hen's nest with eight eggs. The overarching of the grass revealed it. Very close by was another with eight eggs, and still another with eleven. It was now July 2, and these were second layings, for the Marsh Hens here begin their family cares in April or early May. Then we discovered, here and there on the marsh, the nests of the Laughing Gulls, hollows in piles of drift-weed, in each of which were three drab-colored mottled eggs.
Toward evening we landed upon Cobb's Island at the lifesaving station which stands on piles at the edge of the immense salt marsh. Here we were pleasantly entertained by "Captain Jack [Andrews]" and his family. A long bridge on piles leads across the marsh to the outer beach. These structures and a very few others loom above the water and the tops of the submerged grass at high tide, and are all that are left of a thriving village with schools and churches. The sea has claimed its own, and, never satiated, clamors for more. It is not man who will say it nay.
Next day we traversed the long bridge and found ourselves upon the ocean front, which was backed by a wonderful ridge extending perhaps a mile and composed entirely of shells,
particularly of oysters, scallops, and sea-clams. Some of the terns by this time had young. The downy little fellows do not remain long in the home-nest, but wander about freely over the warm sand. Nature's "protective coloration" wonderfully blends them with their surroundings. When an enemy approaches, all they have to do is to squat and keep perfectly still, and the chances are that they will not be noticed.
At one place a Marsh Tern was making a great ado over my presence, screaming and swooping down so vigorously as almost to strike me on the head. Slowly walking about, I kept my eyes fastened on the glaring sand. After some moments, I suddenly spied the cause of the commotion, a young tern squatting at the foot of a weed. During the quarter of an hour I spent photographing it, not yard away, the little creature did not stir a hair's breadth. As long as I did not touch it, it evidently thought itself unobserved. But when my work was done, I gave the touch that dissolved the magic spell, and it went racing away.
In this vicinity the Laughing Gulls were also nesting. Some had nest about on the marsh, others in the clumps of coarse grass just back from the beach. I chose a spot where there were only a few scattered pairs, to make as little commotion as possible and not to keep many birds long off their nests, where I began the ordeal of trying to photograph them at short range. Selecting a nest with the usual three eggs, conveniently located, I set the camera on the ground near it in a clump of grass, the later arched over it in what I thought to be a masterly matter. As I lay hidden, peering over a sand-dune, thread in hand, I was prepared to see the gull return almost at once to its nest. Soon the bird was hovering over it; she seemed about the alight, when away she went. Making a few circlings, she came back but after
hovering provokingly, throwing up her wings as though certainly alighting, again was off. This was repeated till I was thoroughly tired. No further covering of the camera, changing its position, trimming it with leaves, or making an arched passage for it under the grass made any difference. Then I tried other nest, and it was the same old story. Thus was nearly a whole day wasted.
Next day was my last, the Fourth of July, and roasting hot, but I was early at the work again. The night before I had placed piles of seaweed near the nests, and was confident of success. But as the hours again slipped away, and no bird had given me a shot, I nearly lost hope, for I had to start back at one o'clock. Lying on my face in the burning sand, I began to fear being overcome by the heat, and
thought wistfully of my family up in Connecticut eating ice cream in the cool shade!
At quarter of one I seemed to be no nearer succeeding than I had been the morning before. All my resources were exhausted, and I was about ready to quit, when suddenly the hovering gull threw up her wings, and down she went. As I was two hundred yards away I could not be sure that she was really on her eggs. So I waited five minutes, and then, seeing nothing more of her, I carefully and slowly drew the thread taut. Almost as soon as I stood up, the gull flew, evidently from the nest.
This made me feel that at any cost I must have just one more picture. So I changed the plate, set the shutter again,
and returned to hiding. The gull worried me for another half hour, and then gave me my wish. With glad heart I removed the camera, left the birds in peace, and hurried back to the life-saving station, in time to be taken across the bay, and, elbowing through throngs of dark-faced celebrants in the town, to catch the evening train for home.