8 The Wilson Bulletin — No. 82. 



AUTU^IX BIRDS IN ALCONA COUNTY, MICHIGAN'. 



BY J. CLAIRE WOOD. 



We will begin a brief sketch of Alcona County, Michigan, 

 with the statement that between fifteen and twenty years ago 

 the region about the village of Lincoln was a vast primeval 

 forest of white pine and some Norway. Old residents speak 

 of driving about beneath these great trees, there being no 

 undergrowth. They covered the hill tops and slopes, but 

 were replaced in the swampy valleys and low coast lands by 

 hemlock, spruce, cedar and deciduous softwood, growing in 

 a black muck. Near Lake Huron were belts of hard wood, 

 and west of Hubbard Lake an open, sterile, sandy region of 

 which Jack pine, scrub oak and sweet fern are characteristic 

 plants, but the bottom lands differed little from other por- 

 tions. The entire pine and hardwood forest has been cut 

 away, except a few small pieces of the latter. The majority 

 of pine stumps stand to-day and are a detriment to agricul- 

 tural development. From measurements taken, the general 

 run are approximately thirty inches in diameter and some 

 exceed sixty inches. The general aspect of this pins section 

 at the present writing is stumps and logs, with an occasional 

 limbless tree trunk extending into the air. Every stump and 

 stub is blackened by fire, which has ravaged the region more 

 than once and destroyed nearly all of the fertile surface soil, 

 and over it all is a growth of young poplar and some birch. 

 The cultivated area lies mainly east and south of Lincoln, 

 where we find the soil rather poor, as a whole, but with ex- 

 cell'ent patches where the hardwood existed or the humus 

 was not destroyed by fire. 



The village of Lincoln is located on the east and west cen- 

 ter line of the county and seven miles inland from Lake LIu- 

 ron. It claims a population of 200 souls and an approximate 

 area of one square mile, the south half of which is in the 

 southeast corner of Hawes and the remainder in the north- 

 east corner of Gustin Townships. In the easterly portion of 

 the north half is Brownlce lake, nearly half a mile north and 



