INTRODUCTION. 7 
birds of the open country are the Prairie Chicken, Meadowlark, Killdeer, 
Mourning Dove, Marsh Hawk, Turkey Buzzard, Prairie Horned Lark, Lark 
Sparrow, Bobolink, and formerly the Bartramian Sandpiper or Upland 
Plover. Along the tree-fringed streams are found the Bronzed Grackle 
and Red-winged Blackbird, Red-headed Woodpecker and Flicker, and less 
often the Red-bellied Woodpecker, Orchard Oriole, and Prothonotary and 
Sycamore Warblers. The knolls and ridges here and there harbor the Quail 
or Bobwhite, the Tufted Tit, Blue-gray Gnatcatcher, and an occasional 
Chat, Cardinal, Mockingbird and Carolina Wren. 
The Great Marsh Region consists really of at least three separate regions, 
viz.: The extensive marshes bordering the lower Detroit River and western 
end of Lake Erie, the delta of the St. Clair River in Lake St. Clair, and the 
great marshes along the southeast shore of Saginaw Bay. Of course there 
are other marshes, and some large ones, for example at the mouths of the 
Kalamazoo and Muskegon rivers, but most of them are small compared with 
those first named. Characteristic birds of the great marshes during the 
nesting season are the Pied-billed Grebe, Mallard Duck, Blue-winged Teal, 
Coot, Gallinule, Bittern, Least Bittern, Great Blue Heron, Green Heron, 
Black Tern, King Rail, Marsh Hawk, Long-billed Marsh Wren and Red- 
winged Blackbird. During migration waterfowl in great variety visit these 
marshes to feed and rest, and here are located some of the most famous 
ducking grounds in the middle west. 
The Pine Forest Region proper is characterized by the presence in variable 
quantity of the white pine and the red or Norway pine, and is mainly sandy 
land lying north of the 43d parallel, though the original southern limit of the 
merchantable white pine was an irregular curved line, beginning in the 
southwest corner of the state in Van Buren county, extending northeastward 
to the northern part of Gratiot county, and thence east through Saginaw, 
Genesee, Lapeer and St. Clair counties to Port Huron. Throughout the 
region north of this line the white pines and the red pines were always dis- 
tributed irregularly, the largest white pines scattered among the hardwoods, 
and the unmixed tracts of this magnificent tree found on the sandy uplands 
drained by the great streams, the Saginaw, Muskegon, Manistee, Au Sable 
and Thunder Bay rivers. 
The region just outlined as the Pine Region scarcely merits that name at 
present, since merchantable pine has been almost completely removed. The 
precise area of standing pine timber left in the state today is difficult to 
estimate, since cutting is going on constantly and the small amounts left 
are being reduced every day. It is doubtless safe to say that very few 
tracts exceeding eighty acres are still left in this entire area, and even 
eighty-acre tracts are decidedly infrequent. Owing to the fact that much 
other timber was intermixed with the pine in most places and that some of 
the hardwood timber has not yet been touched, part of the region included 
under the above title might now be properly transferred to some other, while 
the greater part of the former pine region, at least in the Lower Peninsula, 
would at present come under the head of ‘‘Cut-over Lands,”’ and much of 
this in turn unfortunately is also ‘“Burnt-over Land.” Throughout the 
entire Pine Region there were great stretches of hardwood forest here and 
there and more frequently swamps largely made up of the white cedar or 
arbor vitae, tamarack, hemlock, balsam fir, and spruce. Hemlocks also occur- 
red regularly among the pines and hardwoods scattered more or less thickly 
and often reaching gigantic size. Where these hemlocks stood among the 
hardwoods and there was little underbrush they have commonly been killed 
