324 



AMERICAN FORESTRY 



SPRINGTIME IN THE WOODS 



(Continued from page 319) 



ent species in the same piece of woodland. Among the 

 earliest of these migrants is the Junco, a little bird with 

 the head, back, throat and breast slate gray, the under- 

 parts white, and a white bill. This species feeds on the 

 ground and has a partiality for the vicinity of brush- 

 piles. It has a great variety of call-notes, and its song 

 resembles that of the Chipping Sparrow of our door- 

 yards and roadsides but is somewhat deeper in tone. 



The White-throated Sparrow, a large sparrow with a 

 plain gray breast, a white throat and a yellow spot in 

 front of the eye, is another early migrant, and its plain- 

 tive minor whistle, ending in three sets of triplets, is 

 one of the sweetest sounds of the spring woods. As is 

 the case with all birds the songs of different White- 

 throats vary a great deal. They are all, it is true, built 

 on the same general plan and may at once be recognized 

 as the song of this species, but there is an infinite variety 

 of detail which can be detected by the keen ear well 

 attuned to bird music. 



The Purple Finch, a bird of glistening, deep carmine 

 plumage, is another excellent musician, singing a rich, 

 rolling, well-sustained song. This species has a decided 

 fondness for buds of various kinds, and may often be 

 seen eating the catkins of the poplars. 



The two Kinglets, the Golden-crowned and the Ruby- 

 crowned, the smallest of our birds with the exception of 

 the Hummingbirds, are common during the spring 



migration, and flit about the trees prying into every nook 

 and cranny in search of insect tid-bits. The Golden- 

 crowned Kinglet has nothing much in the way of a 

 song, but the Ruby-crowned has a beautiful song of 

 most surprising power for so small a bird and, while 

 singing, the male often elevates his ruby crown-patch. 



A great many of the birds which visit our woods in 

 the spring are Warblers, small, mostly gaily-colored 

 birds of which there are a large number of species. They 

 rove about the woods in loose flocks, usually made up 

 of several species, and are constantly flitting from tree 

 to tree. Some species frequent the lower branches of the 

 trees and the underbrush, while others keep to the top- 

 most branches of the tallest trees. None of the Warblers 

 are distinguished musicians though most of them have 

 quaint and characteristic little ditties. 



The Wilson's Thrush is one of our earliest woodland 

 summer residents to arrive. It is usually silent for a 

 few days after its arrival, then for a few days it sings 

 a faint "ghost-song," and then breaks into its full song 

 which is a beautiful refrain with a remarkable quality 

 which can be best described as spiral. 



The Chipmunk, too, has awakened from its winter 

 sleep, and sitting up on a log or stump it sends forth its 

 call of "chonk-chonk-chonk" which is taken up by other 

 chipmunks until the woods re-echo to the chorus with 

 which these little animals greet the spring. 



IDENTIFICATION OF OAK WOODS 



OVER fifty species of native oaks assume the pro- 

 portions of trees, and about twenty-five are used 

 for lumber. After the oaks are cut into lumber, there 

 is no means known to the United States Forest Products 

 Laboratory by which they can be identified as to exact 

 species. By examination of the wood alone, however, it is 

 easy to separate the oaks into two groups the white 

 oaks and the red oaks ; and for the most purposes, for- 

 tunately, it is not necessary to classify them any fur- 

 ther. The oaks all average about the same in strength, 

 but those in the white oak group are much more durable 

 under conditions favorable to decay than those in the 

 red oak group. 



The white oak group includes true white oak, swamp 

 oak, bur oak, cow oak, post oak, overcup oak, and chest- 

 nut oak. The red oak group includes true red oak, yellow 

 or black oak, scarlet oak, Spanish oak, Texan oak, black 

 jack, water oak, willow oak, and laurel oak. 



The color of the wood is a ready but not absolutely 

 reliable means of distinguishing the white oaks from 

 the red oaks. Red oaks usually have a distinctly red- 

 dish tinge, especially near the knots. The wood of the 

 white oaks is generally a grayish brown; but occasion- 

 ally a reddish tinge is found in white oak lumber. 



For more accurate identification it is necessary to 



examine the pores of the wood. These will be found as 

 tiny holes on a smoothly-cut end surface, the largest 

 being visible to the unaided eye. They are not of 

 uniform size throughout each growth ring, but are con- 

 siderably larger in the wood formed in the spring, de- 

 creasing in size rather abruptly towards the summer- 

 wood. The large pores in the springwood of the heart- 

 wood and inner sapwood of the white oaks are usually 

 plugged up with a froth-like growth called tyloses, and 

 those of the red oaks are open. This feature, however, is 

 not so reliable for classification as the character of 

 the much smaller pores in the summerwood. 



To tell for a certainty whether a piece of oak belongs 

 to the white or red oak group, cut the end grain smoothly 

 with a sharp knife across several growth rings of average 

 width. With the aid of a hand lens examine the small 

 pores in the dense summerwood. If the pores; in this 

 part of the growth ring are plainly visible as minute 

 rounded openings, and are not so crowded but that they 

 can readily be counted, the wood belongs to the red oak 

 group. If the pores in the summerwood are very small, 

 somewhat angular, and so numerous that it would be 

 exceedingly difficult to count them, the wood belongs to 

 the white oak group. 



