4o8 Roosevelt Wild Life Bulletin 



Birds are inclined to maintain established spaces through which 

 they can roam in singing and feeding without interference from 

 others of their own kind. (See Mousley, '21, and Saunders, '14). 

 When it is recalled that several broods of birds are reared in a small, 

 definite habitat, it is a logical question to ask: Where are they to 

 dispose themselves the next season, if all survive and the parents 

 return to their former habitat? The new clearing partly solves the 

 problem by affording increased space for birds nesting in the open; 

 and this fact suggests an explanation of the phenomenon of the 

 fairly constant numbers of individuals and species in any particular 

 place. Many examples might be cited to show that birds adapted 

 to their conditions immediately resort to new clearings. Orchards, 

 especially those infested with canker worms or other insects, become 

 a general rendezvous for the birds of the neighborhood. "Birds of 

 the most varied character and habits," says Dr. S. A. Forbes ('82, p. 

 20), speaking of a certain orchard, " migrant and resident, of all 

 sizes, from the tiny Wren to the Blue Jay, birds of the forest, garden 

 and meadow, those of arboreal and those of terrestrial habit, were 

 certainly either attracted or detained here by the bountiful supply 

 of insect food, and were feeding freely upon the species most abund- 

 ant." Many cases of this kind indicate that the prevalence of desir- 

 able insects, easy to be obtained, is a powerful influence in attracting 

 birds, and that birds are led on this account to seek out clearings 

 and natural openings in a forested region in order to take advantage 

 of the abundance of suitable food. 



4. The Burned Tract. I define as the " Burn " (figure 126) an 

 area on the lakeshore east of the Camp, about half a mile in width, 

 that was swept by fire in 1908. On its eastern side it merges into 

 a bog partially forested, and along its southern side there is a dry 

 meadow (figure 127). This burned tract is the center of the bird 

 activities of the Barber Point neighborhood, for it presents features 

 which are probably the chief factors in making that neighborhood 

 a major avian habitat. Its aspect after eight years of new growth 

 is that of the aspen-fire cherry-birch association (figure 128). It 

 has no large living trees except in one small spot near its middle, 

 where there is a group of tall hardwoods as relics of the original. 

 Everywhere over the Burn are tall dead snags, boles and stumps, 

 the remains of hardwoods evidently left by the lumbermen when 

 the conifers were taken out. Later these trees were killed by the 

 fires, and some of the trunks still remain standing, while the rest 

 have fallen in a general tangle, difficult to travel through (figure 

 129). The drier parts of the burned land and its marginal aspect 

 are well indicated in figure 130. F. M. Gaige ('14. p. 74) has 

 explained the effects of such a burning on the local distribution of 

 birds in northern Michigan. " It excluded," he tells us, " some 

 species that must otherwise have been present, and favored the intro- 

 duction of others by influencing food, nesting sites and enemies, 

 and it affected the birds both in their breeding and migration sea- 

 sons. Very interesting are the species favored by the Burn. They 



