Eastern Shore of Virginia -- Earlier Visits to Revels Island

REVELS ISLAND, partly marsh and partly a low ridge overgrown with pines and cedars, is surrounded by extensive salt marshes and shallow bays. It lies about a mile to the southward of Little Machipongo Inlet, and the same distance inland from the sand dunes along Parramore Beach, on the Atlantic coast.

It is one of a group bordering the eastern shore of Virginia, between the open beach and the mainland. The islands are in Accomac County, one of the two counties forming the eastern shore of Virginia, and terminating the peninsula that also borders the eastern shore of Chesapeake Bay

ISLAND OWNED BY SHOOTING CLUB

Revels Island, owned by the Revels Island Shooting Club, of which I became a member in 1894, comprises several thousand acres. It contains two large, nearly land-locked bays, sufficiently shallow to form feeding-places for ducks, geese, and brant; a few fresh-water ponds which are visited by black ducks; and many mud flats and sandy beaches attractive to shore birds. Several navigable channels give access by motor boat to most of the property, and at times of high tides many creeklike waterways penetrate other parts of the island otherwise inaccessible by boat.

Just south of the clubhouse is a long, broad, sandy beach, extending a mile east, and terminating in a sandy point. Across the water a similar point on Sandy Island combines with it nearly to enclose Revels Island Bay, which is the best feeding-place for ducks, geese, and brant in this region.

Nearly a mile north of the clubhouse is a long narrow ridge covered with yellow pines, cedars, and several kind of bushes. At intervals of two or three years a very high spring tide occurs, and all the property except the ridge is covered with a foot or two of water. Once when I visited the island, the clubhouse and cottages were surrounded by the tidewaters, and no land was visible for many miles except the pine ridge and the distant main shore.

Because of these occasional floods, predatory animals, as a rule, avoided the area, although once or twice a pair of foxes appeared and made a den on the ridge, from which place they were easily dug out by fox hunters. The ground-breeding birds, therefore, had no four-footed enemies, and those nesting in the trees apparently were rarely disturbed by owls. The only resident hawk was the osprey, which always lives on friendly terms with its neighbors. Bald eagles were not uncommon, but they lived mainly on fish taken from the ospreys, or on dead fish and dead or wounded ducks.

To the southward lies the long, ocean washed Hog Island, which helps to enclose Broadwaters, a part of the eastern shore of a wide bay or sound that was once the favored shooting resort of Grover Cleveland.

The nesting birds had, however, one enemy that was present throughout the breeding season, and caused great havoc by destroying thousands of eggs and many of the nestlings. This was the fish crow. Members of the species apparently timed their coming to arrive on the island at the beginning of the period when food of this kind became abundant.

In May, under one tall pine, I found about 500 eggshells, most of them having a large puncture in one end. They were chiefly the eggs of the laughing, or black-headed gull, and the marsh hen, or clapper rail, but included, also, those of the green heron, grackle, red-winged blackbird, skimmer, and willet.

EGGERS CAUSE SAD HAVOC

Other enemies of some of the breeding birds were the "eggers," including a large proportion of the natives of the Eastern Shore. Under local law it was permissible to collect newly laid eggs at the beginning of the nesting season. The eggs so taken were largely those of the laughing gull and the marsh hen. Gull nests were often closely grouped over several acres; consequently the eggs were easily collected.

One day I spoke to Jonah, the colored chore boy at the clubhouse, about a breeding colony of laughing gulls, and was surprised at the interest he displayed. I understood this a week later, when, on visiting the back yard at his request, I found a rounded heap of gulls' eggs, some four hundred in number. Dismayed at this sight, I voiced my disapproval.

Whether or not such annual pillage has any serious effect on the number of young raised each season, the Federal bird law has outlawed the practice, although I do not doubt that eggs in considerable numbers are still collected each year.

When Jonah saw how annoyed I was by his raid on the gull colony, he sought to turn my thoughts elsewhere by asking if I had seen the big whale that was stranded on Sandy Island. I told him that I had not seen it, but that I thought it would afford a good opportunity for a modern version of Jonah and the whale, and that if he would sit in its mouth this could be accomplished.

Jonah replied: "Excuse me, boss, I don't want to go within 100 feet of that critter, for the smell is awful. Jes' wait till the wind comes from the west and you'll want to leave here and go home."

The clapper rails, called locally marsh hens, were abundant on Revels Island, but they lived such secretive lives in the tall grasses that, despite their harsh, cackling notes, they were rarely seen except when one made a painstaking search for them. Each spring they returned from the South in extraordinary numbers, and skulked about among the grasses, rising and flying only a short distance when startled. At such times their weak flight makes them an easy target for the hunter. Their nests, neatly hidden under the overarching grasses, contain from 10 to 18 pale eggs that are comparatively large for so small a bird.

CLAPPER RAILS' EGGS PRIZED

As was the case with the black-headed gulls, thousands of the eggs of these rails were taken when they were freshly laid. Trained dogs were sometimes used to help find the artfully concealed nests. In seasons when heavy tides raised the water level of the marshes, an enormous number of eggs of the clapper rail floated from the nests and formed a drift line along the shores of the marshy areas. After the tide had receded, the birds lost no time in laying new clutches, and their great numbers appeared to continue undiminished.

The eggers argued with apparently demonstrated justification that a general
robbery of the nests of the rails and the black-headed gulls for a short period under local regulation had no effect upon the numbers of the young birds reared each year. The robbed parents promptly proceeded to lay new sets of eggs. If the nests were repeatedly despoiled, the effect would unquestionably be harmful.

The wild-fowl shooting in the tidal waters close to Revels Island never equaled that in the sounds farther south. The peculiar shortage was due largely to the absence of fresh-water ducks, the black duck being the only one in this class found in abundance.

FLOATING BLINDS AND BOATS USEFUL

When I first visited Revels Island, many geese, brant, and broadbills (scaups), with occasional flocks of redheads, and a fair number of golden-eyes and buffleheads, or butter balls, frequented the region. This club was the first, I believe, to introduce floating blinds made of green cedar boughs stuck in buoyant wooden frames large enough to admit a ducking boat. Within these floating blinds a narrow, flat-bottomed scow was sometimes left during the shooting season for the use of the sportsmen.

Such a contrivance, when anchored, was always headed up wind, so that the decoys could be placed out to advantage. The hunter needed to watch only for the approaching birds, which, according to their habit, came in against the wind. Moreover, these floating blinds rose and fell with the tide; whereas it was difficult to shoot from stuck blinds at low tide, and an exceptionally high one exposed the boat and hunter. The floating blinds were set out before the arrival of the birds, which, in consequence, regarded the clump of cedars as a part of the landscape.

In those days no baiting was done, and it was essential to have the blinds located on good feeding-grounds or along narrow flyways. At first the shooting was satisfactory, but it gradually became poorer as the shallow bays were leased for oyster planting, and the near-by guardhouses, which were continuously occupied by watchmen in the fall and winter, became nuisances.

When naphtha launches, and later those propelled by gasoline, displaced the sailboats, these bays were kept in a state of continual disturbance, for with motor craft the lack of wind was no obstacle, but tended to increase activities.

FOWLERS HAVE AN INGENIOUS METHOD OF USING A BLIND

On the eastern shore marshes of Virginia, many of the black ducks have learned the danger of going to their feeding-places in freshwater ponds by day, and seek them as the shades of night are falling. Taking advantage of this, the hunters have devised an unusual method of outwitting the wary birds. They make a high mound of marsh grass or seaweed near the side of the pond toward which the ducks usually come. Before the evening flight begins, the hunter, dressed in dark clothing, takes his place in
front of the blind instead of behind it, for the approaching birds would see his projecting head if he were looking over the blind from behind. Sitting in front, he blends into it and is invisible.

For many years some market hunters on the marshes of the eastern shore of Virginia have used the destructive method of netting black ducks at night. Both the netting of the birds and their sale have long been outlawed, but persistent efforts to break up this nefarious practice have not yet become entirely successful.

DUCKS NETTED BY POACHERS

Nets have about a two-inch mesh, large enough to permit a duck's head to pass through, but not to be withdrawn easily, since the feathers catch on the sides of the mesh. The nets are staked horizontally along the surface of the shallow water of natural or artificial channels, leading out from ponds frequented by the birds. Corn is then scattered in front and under the nets. The ducks, following the bait heads down, swim slowly under the nets as they feed. When their heads are raised they slip through the meshes and are held fast. Sometimes almost an entire flock will be taken by this means. The outlaws who do this are so well acquainted with the marshes and work so slyly that they are difficult to apprehend.

The marshes and mud flats about Revels Island were famous for the number and variety of shore birds that visited them during migration. Even when an alarming decrease in the numbers of these birds was noticed along the greater part of the Atlantic coast, these marshes were apparently the stopping place of all the survivors.

It is not strange that eventually a tremendous decrease in shore birds was observed during migrations; for in the spring when the local shore birds were either nesting or mating every clubhouse from Virginia to New Jersey was filled with members intent on hunting shore birds at a season when all other shooting was prohibited.

WHOLESALE SLAUGHTER WASTEFUL

Day after day I have seen otherwise reputable sportsmen bring in 200 birds, and when the weather was warm it was practically impossible to keep such birds from spoiling. In the later years, convinced of its wastefulness, I gave up spring shooting,
but, having substituted the camera for the gun, I was doubtless less tempted than some of the others.

In an article published some years ago, I related an incident of one of my May hunting trips with a camera. I was accompanied by a shooting companion, who fired at a clapper rail as it arose. When the wounded bird was retrieved by the spaniel, a blood splotched egg was laid in the sportsman's hand. The incident immediately made another convert to the creed opposed to spring shooting.

SHORE BIRDS AT NIGHT ON REVELS ISLAND

After watching for many years the shore birds in their daily flight along the beaches and mud flats or about marshy ponds, I often wondered how they passed the night. Undoubtedly in the breeding season most of these little waders are more or less concealed about the nests, but during their migrations they remain near the open water.

To test this question on Revels Island, I made two trips with a jacklight to the places much frequented by these birds in the daytime. The Hudsonian curlews I found massed in considerable flocks on flats just above high tide, were at one time they were shot by natives with the aid of a kerosene torch or lantern. Flocks of sandpipers, turnstones, robin-snipe, and a few black-breasted plover were seen squatting on the sandy shore, or on mud banks, while dowitchers were in the scanty grass a few yards farther back. Species that did not gather in large flocks by day, such as the yellowlegs, willet, ring-necked and semipalmated plover, were not seen. Being more or less solitary in habits, they were probably concealed in the vegetation back from the shore or about marshy ponds.

In the course of my visit to Revels Island a marked transition took place in the oyster industry. In the early years I saw oysters dredged from the deeper waters of the small bays and channels, but these shell fish gradually decreased until the business was threatened. The wild oysters varied greatly in size, and it became increasingly difficult to find a sufficient quantity of the standard sizes to meet the requirements of the market.

OYSTER FARMING INTERFERES WITH WILD FOWL

Finally the State of Virginia leased the best oyster grounds to individuals, although some of the beds were barren of oysters at the time. An abundance of old shells and some living oyster were strewn on the bottom to afford attachments for the oyster spawn, and this method of water farming soon proved so successful in producing desirable shell fish that a state of warfare developed between the lease holders protecting their property and those called "oyster pirates," who believed they had an inalienable right to anything produced by the sea. In order to protect the planted oyster beds it finally became necessary to station guards armed with rifles along the shore during fall and winter. Small houses were built near by for their accommodation.

The establishment of the guards in all the best bays of the region had a disastrous effect upon the wild-fowl shooting. Geese, brant, and ducks were accustomed to feed and rest in the bays, especially in rough weather. No sooner did a flock of birds settle on the water, however, than the nearest guards would send rifle balls into their midst, driving them out to sea or into the big bays, where they would remain until darkness enabled them to return in safety. In the same period the few sailboats were displaced by many noisy motor boats that kept the birds in constant alarm.

THE AUTHOR REFRAINS FROM SHOOTING INTO A VORTEX OF DUCKS

On The Eastern Shore there was as a rule no noticeable increased migratory flight on the approach of cold weather, but the birds arrived in easy stages from the North, as the waters there were gradually chilled. This was in contrast to the movement in spring when the wild fowl passed in almost continuous flights to their northern breeding grounds.

One afternoon in November, 1896, I was occupying a floating blind in Revels Island Bay. A strong, cold north wind, the first of the season, foretold the coming of freezing weather. Looking toward the north, I saw what appeared like a cloud in the otherwise clear sky. Soon it was apparent that an immense flock of ducks numbering thousands was approaching high in the air.

When the travelers sighted the broad shallow waters ahead, they swooped downward with a roar almost like that of a western cyclone. From a great height the birds descended in a graceful spiral. Three times this vast flock of scaups, for such they were, hurtled over the blind, dropping several hundred yards at each turn, making a sound with their wings resembling the sighing of a high wind in the treetops. Finally the visitors passed low over my decoys and alighted all about me with a tumultuous splashing, some almost striking the brush blind in which I sat.

Although tempted to shoot into the crowded ranks, with the prospect of dropping half a dozen birds, I restrained the impulse in order that the hungry and tired ducks could enjoy a period of rest, and thereby be induced to remain a day or two longer. It was a delightful experience to sit concealed in their midst. Some of the scaups splashed about vigorously, taking refreshing baths, some immediately began diving in search of food, and some faced the wind in little groups with heads drawn down on their shoulders, weary from the long flight.

No doubt among this flock were many ducks that were familiar with the attractions of this locality through visits during former seasons. They guided in the inexperienced youngsters of a new generation, even though they may previously have seen many a companion fall before the gun, an inevitable peril that these migrants must face wherever may be located their winter quarters.

As the wind and the tide forced the flock toward the opposite shore, I quietly withdrew, content in not having collected any toll from these newly arrived wanderers.

MEMORIES OF AUNT CAROLINE'S COOKING STILL LINGER

Aunt Caroline, a faithful and proficient colored cook, had charge of the club kitchen for more than a generation. She was always appreciated and was regarded as one of the club's valuable assets. Living in a State famous for its culinary art, she had few equals. The making of delicious clam chowder was one of her greatest accomplishments, and large clams were always available on a sandspit only about 100 yards away.

Early in the fall a goodly supply of oysters would be gathered from distant bays and placed in the shallow water on both sides of the long dock. Sometimes between meals a guide would wade out and get a basketful of them, which would be opened and eaten by us on the sunny side of the boathouse. Aunt Caroline served the oysters in several ways.

In the winter months, eels speared in their hibernating places in the mud at the heads of creeks were another delicacy on the bill of fare. In the hunting season Aunt Caroline produced the most appetizing dishes of perfectly cooked ducks and shore birds, besides stewed terrapin and snipe potpies. The memory of her pastries, including apple and pumpkins pies, puddings, doughnuts, and other tasty products of her skill, still remains with me. Even the little tin lunch pails that were sent out to the blinds with us were like little Christmas boxes with their varied assortment of good things to allay the hearty appetites we had sharpened by hours in the open air.

LITTLE JERRY, THE OX, WAS A FAMOUS CHARACTER

One resident on Revels Island familiar to all the club members for many years was Jerry the ox. Although he was almost a dwarf of his kind, his black and white figure was considered an ornament to the flat landscape. He served us in many useful ways, and his doings afforded both exasperation and interest. Harnessed to a little cart, he hauled coal and wood from the dock and building material for new structures. He carted decoys and other material to ponds inaccessible by boat, and brought
such produce as pumpkins, beets, turnips, and sweet potatoes from our productive garden on the higher ground to the roothouse under the kitchen.

None of these duties was to Jerry's liking, and whenever he saw the scow tie up to the dock, or noted any other occurrences that he had learned to associate with distasteful chores, he would quietly disappear. Later he would usually be found ensconced in a brushy thicket on the wooded ridge farther inland. Once the search for him seemed fruitless, and it was thought he had probably crossed the channel to another island.

He was eventually discovered hiding behind the timbers of a wrecked schooner half a mile down the beach, from which point of vantage he was able to view the prolonged search with apparent enjoyment. When once harnessed to the cart, however, he was docile and energetic enough, so that his elusive ways were looked upon with tolerant amusement.

Because of the mild climate, no special shelter was provided for Jerry. When a cold wind blew, he would take refuge behind one of the buildings or amid the thickets of the little pine woods on the ridge.

His four-footed companions were the half dozen young hogs that each season grew fat on the swamp roots and other food they could gather in the marsh or along the shore until the time arrived when they were converted into ham and bacon in the smokehouse.

JERRY WAS A PHILOSOPHER

When the day of slaughter came, Jerry always looked on complacently as if approving such disposal of the grunting creatures, which had never appeared to pay the slightest attention to him. For a long time jerry was regarded as one of the odd characters of the locality.