43§ Roosevelt Wild Life Bulletin 



Reviewing these statistics, it appears that in 1916 an average of 

 about three pairs of woodland birds nested on an acre in the region 

 surveyed. The burned tract appears to rank first as a preferred 

 habitat, and the virgin forest gave fewest families. 



I have at hand a report by Wells W. Cooke concerning bird 

 counts in various localities, among them several made in wood- 

 lands, and to these I briefly refer for comparison. He states 

 ('16, p. 9) that " in the mountains of Arizona, near Flagstaff, a tract 

 of 70 acres at about 7,100 feet elevation, covered with western yel- 

 low pine and Gambel oak, supported a bird population of 31 pairs 

 of 18 species." Also, along the shore of Flathead Lake, Montana, 

 45 acres of woodland had 67 pairs of 24 species. Again, " a 60-acre 

 tract of wooded hillsides near Gilroy, California, was supporting 

 36 pairs of 10 species." The foregoing data indicates that the west- 

 ern part of the Plains, the Rocky Mountain region, and the Pacific 

 slope contain a smaller number of birds per acre than the Eastern 

 States under nearly similar conditions. From all the evidence sub- 

 mitted, I am warranted in concluding that the Adirondack region 

 holds a leading place among forest habitats as a summer home for 

 birds. 



A LIST, WITH NOTES, OF THE SUMMER BIRDS ABOUT 

 CRANBERRY LAKE 



The making of the subjoined list was not the motive of my work 

 at the Forestry Camp on Cranberry Lake, but incidental to it, and 

 more species might have been recorded during the period given to 

 my observation — June 22 to August 20, 1916 — had that been the 

 primary object. In the notes regarding each species special atten- 

 tion had been given to the local factors determining habitat 

 preferences rather than to so-called zones of life, for the reason that 

 all the birds herein enumerated are practically included in the one 

 general type of mixed forest in one or another of its varying aspects. 

 My concern was chiefly with the land birds, as dwellers in the 

 forest, little attention being paid to the water birds, which in fact 

 are few about such a typical forest lake lacking in water plants. 

 Cat-tail swamps, with areas of open water margined by reeds and 

 rushes, are rather rare in the western Adirondacks. The water 

 birds of the region can therefore all be accounted for either as those 

 nesting usually in tree cavities, as do the Merganser and Wood 

 Duck; or those feeding principally on fish, frogs and related kinds 

 of food, as the Heron and the Loon. Moreover, the influence of 

 the Ontario-Oneida water plain on the west, and of the Hudson- 

 Champlain waterway on the east, both attractive to the aquatic birds 

 of northern New York, might serve to lessen their frequency here. 



The list includes a few species (indicated by an asterisk) not 

 directly observed by me in the season of 1916, but which occur more 

 or less regularly throughout the western Adirondack region and are 

 noticed to some extent in the course of travel through the Park. 

 The records are well authenticated, but as a rule the birds mentioned 



