291 



ners here. Railway workmen cut the weeds and shrubbery and 

 sometimes burn over the region in the fall. Trains passing also dis- 

 turb the animal life. On the other hand, the telegraph line consti- 

 tutes a very attractive feature for birds. Eight of the twenty-nine 

 species of birds that were seen at or near the station were noted only 

 on the wires and poles, which appeared to be the one feature of the 

 place to bring them there, and a majority of all the individual birds 

 noted were upon the poles or wires. 



The vertebrate life of Station I is influenced considerably by the 

 nature of the region about it. From neighboring corn fields, where 

 they fed, blackbirds would come and gather in large numbers on the 

 telegraph wires ; and birds attracted to roadside cherry-trees near 

 the south end of the station also used wires near by as a resting place. 

 Beneath the wires and along fences in the neighborhood of this row 

 of trees many small cherry-trees had sprung up, in all probability 

 from cherry-stones dropped by the birds (PI. LXVII, Fig. i, and 

 PI. LXX, Fig. 2). In the former figure there are no trees visible un- 

 der the wire, those formerly there having been cut away by railroad 

 employees, but there are cherry-trees visible along the fence. Were 

 it not for the destructive activities of man, the south part of the 

 station would soon develop into a small cherry thicket, having its 

 origin in cherry-stones dropped there by the birds. A tall naked stub 

 in the field a few hundred feet east of the middle of the station was 

 a kind of headquarters for woodpeckers, ten nesting-holes being 

 counted in it (PI. LXXI, Fig. 2). 



The small piece of swamp a short distance east of the station 

 may have been responsible for the presence, at the station, of red- 

 winged blackbirds, the green heron, and the rails. All of these birds 

 frequent such places in the Charleston region, and red-winged black- 

 birds nest there in considerable numbers. A green heron's nest was 

 found in a little swamp similar to this one but some two miles north- 

 west of it. A flicker's nest was found in this swamp May 21, 1914. 



The Forest Area, Station II 



As stated above, the piece of woods studied is about three and a 

 half miles northeast of Charleston, perhaps a quarter of a mile north 

 of the Big Four railroad and a few rods west of the Embarras River. 



The topography of the woods is much varied. A part of the 

 woods is on the west slope of the Embarras valley, and other por- 

 tions are on the high ground and on the low ground adjacent to this 

 slope; besides, two rather complex ravine systems cut up the woods 

 considerably. There are, then, four rather distinct kinds of region in 



