Adirondack Beaver 159 



view. He asserts that deer do not keep so closely to the swamps 

 in winter as many people seem to think, but frequently go feeding 

 in numbers on the very tops of the hills. He had himself witnessed 

 this many times. Instead of being detrimental to deer beaver flows 

 were, in his estimation, distinctly an advantage, in that they not 

 only afforded refuges from persons who practice night hunting, 

 but also because they made travel so difficult under other methods 

 of hunting that the deer were given a better chance to escape. 



Mr. H. H. Covey pointed out as one of the objections to the 

 beaver, that the little grassy meadows or margins so frequently 

 occurring along the shores of streams or ponds and forming favorite 

 feeding places of deer during the summer months, are often sub- 

 merged by the beaver flows. The deer are thus driven away from 

 the watercourses to more inaccessible places. The harm in this is 

 that summer guests are deprived of one of their chief delights, that 

 of seeing deer. He mentioned particular localities where prior to 

 the coming of the beaver visitors might daily enjoy the sight of 

 deer but where now the animals are rarely or never seen. 



Relation to Certain Water Birds. A point that may be worthy 

 of mention is the common occurrence of the Black Duck (Anas 

 rubripes) that was noted about the beaver ponds in the Adirondacks. 

 On many occasions I saw what in all probability were locally hatched 

 broods of this species. They were observed most frequently in the 

 older beaver ponds and in flows along streams with exposed muddy 

 shores and plenty of cover in the form of dense stands of alders, 

 windfall timber or other dead wood. 



Other water birds observed in or about beaver flows were : Great 

 Blue Heron, common ; Hooded Merganser, occasional, — the Ameri- 

 can Merganser also being seen a number of times on natural ponds 

 and once on Cold River ; American Golden-eye, occasional ; Solitary 

 Sandpiper, fairly common. 



Relation to Private Holdings within the Adirondack Preserve 



From the owners of summer cottages or of camps (inns) on lake 

 fronts came the chief complaints heard in the course of the investi- 

 gation. Owners of large private preserves, where many beaver are 

 probably found, were not personally met with and their attitude 

 toward the beaver was consequently not learned ; but from what was 

 observed their problem is mainly that of preventing areas of timber 

 land from being flooded. This requires constant vigilance on the 



