116 



COVER CHARACTERISTICS AND SHELTER REQUIREMENTS 



tures often combine to furnish much high quality grouse habitat, although, along the ridges 

 and at the higher elevations, the continuous forest cover seems to meet less satisfactorily the 

 varied needs of the birds. 



Rest of State 



The regions just discussed contained much land too steep, too stony or too difficult of access 

 to attract many settlers but, in their broad periphery and across the south-central and south- 

 western part of the State (locally known as the .Southern Tier), conditions were more favor- 

 able. On the hilltops farmers moved in, cleared or sold off much of the pine and hemlock, 



►■ 



THE ADIRONDACK REGION CONSIST.S OF MOUNTAINS AND WIDE LOWLANDS, FORESTED CHIEFLY 

 WITH SPRITE. BALSAM. PINE. BIRCH AND MAPLE. IN THE VALLEYS ARE SCATTERED PONDS, 



SWAMPS AND CLEARINGS 



mined the shallow top soil of sidehill and upland and stripped the woods of everything 

 worth selling and moved out a century later. 



In the deeper valleys and occasional fertile upland pocket, however, farming has prospered. 

 Here woodlands have shrunk to woodlots. held as a source of lumber, posts and cordwood 

 needed about the farm. Where these arc sufficiently large and not too heavily pastured, some 

 grouse usually find acceptable, if limited, coverts. 



But in the poorer uplands, where the farmer has given up or is at best making scant prog- 

 ress in combatting the shrubs and trees which seem, in a few short years, to take possession 

 of his unworkcd fields or his jjoorly grazed pasture, grouse habitats, as productive as any in 

 the Northeast, are commonly to be found. Here Allegheny and Northern hardwood types 

 meet. Oak and maple, beech and birch, pine and hemlock vie with each other in endless pro- 

 fusion. The partly abandoned farmlands and pastures are constantly being overrun by fall 



