Notes from Cape Charles, Va.

THE season for brant has opened auspiciously, there are a great many birds in and around Chesapeake Bay, mostly young. The weather as yet has not been suitable for shooting.

Captain Fowle, of Staunton, Jim Fox, of Richmond, and myself, all from Virginia, are here waiting for the flood tide, a bright sun and a high wind all combined, so that we can make our guns heard over the decoys. Will notify you later of the sport.

Elkenny Cobb, of Cobb's Island, a professional gunner, always anchors off this place for his game, there being but poor shooting around Cobb's, for the reason, as I wrote you before, of the oysterman keeping up a constant fusilade against the ducks. Fortunately there are but few oysters and clams in the immediate vicinity, hence the unusual quantity of birds. The black ducks are plentiful, but to-day all the geese rose high in the air and headed their flight due south, and there is not a single one to be seen now. Whether their migration southward is the harbinger of cold weather I cannot tell, not being up on signs.

There are hardly any snipe this fall, where there was a hundred last winter there is about one now.

CHASSEUR.

CAPE CHARLES, Va., Dec. 6.