INTRODUCTION, 9 
neighboring counties, if not in similar regions in the Upper Peninsula and in 
Wisconsin. 
The borders of the rivers and smaller streams which dissect the plains 
furnish other common species, such as the Kingfisher, Bank Swallow, Great 
Blue Heron, Rose-breasted Grosbeak, Crested Flycatcher, Song Sparrow 
and Phoebe, while the included or adjacent swamps of arbor vitae (white 
cedar). balsam-fir, spruce, hemlock and white pine harbor scores of other 
birds, the most abundant and universal being half a dozen kinds of hawks 
and owls, three or four species of woodpeckers, including the Black-backed 
Three-toed, a dozen species of warblers (Canadian, Magnolia, Black and 
White, Parula, Yellow-rumped, Blackburnian, Yellow, Maryland Yellow- 
throat, Nashville, Mourning. Small-billed Waterthrush, Black-throated 
Green), several flycatchers and thrushes, the Winter Wren, and commonest 
of all, the White-throated Sparrow. It is a singular fact that the Jack Pine 
Plains proper have no single species of warbler which is at all characteristic, 
with the exception of the rare Kirtland, of whose distribution as yet we 
know so little. True, in certain spots, where conditions are especially 
favorable, where the Jack Pines themselves form goodly groves of medium 
height, or where oaks and maples indicate better soil or more moisture, we 
find the Oven-bird, the Black-throated Green Warbler and the Black and 
White, while an occasional Chestnut-sided, Yellow, or Redstart may be 
found almost anywhere; as a rule, however, the typical Jack Pine Plains are 
marked: by the complete absence of warblers. 
The Hardwood Forest Region in the upper half of the Lower Peninsula 
still includes hundreds of thousands of acres of hardwood lands, on which 
there is a heavy growth of noble beech and maple, intermixed with birch, 
basswood and other broad-leaved trees, and formerly with scattered white 
pines and hemlocks of large size, now mostly cut by the lumberman. These 
woods, for the most part, are on high or at least fairly well-drained land, 
not to be mistaken for the swamp lands with their much inferior covering 
of elm, ash, birch, cottonwood, tamarack, red maple and other softwood 
trees. These grand hardwood forests are the summer homes of many birds 
not seen elsewhere, though of course they shelter also species of general 
distribution. 
Among the more characteristic forms may be mentioned, again in ap- 
proximate order of abundance: Hairy and Downy Woodpeckers, White- 
breasted Nuthatch, Chickadee, Wood Pewee, Hermit and Wood Thrushes, 
Red-eyed and Solitary Vireos, Sapsucker, Crow, Rose-breasted Grosbeak, 
Scarlet Tanager, Ovenbird, Blackburnian, Black-throated Blue and Black 
and White Warblers, Redstart, Red-shouldered, Broad-winged and Cooper’s 
Hawks, Winter Wren, and Pileated Woodpecker. 
Burnt-over lands, of which there are millions of acres in the state, vary 
much in their bird-life according to the nature of the original forest, whether 
largely pine or hardwood, and especially the length of time which has elapsed 
since the burning. The most desolate are the pine regions originally lumbered 
and then burned, where the sandy soil has had most of the humus eaten out 
by the fire and there is not enough body left to sustain a good second growth. 
Such an area comes to be lightly covered with blueberry and blackberry 
bushes, aspen or poplar, and one or more species of small willow, while the 
visible remnants of the primeval forest, soon disappear. One may ride for 
hours through these desolate solitudes and see hardly more than a dozen species 
of birds, the commonest being the Vesper Sparrow, Field Sparrow, Chewink, 
