Lake Umbagog.
1907
Brown Creepers, too, were much given to haunting the stubs
where they built their nests under large scales of semi-detached
bark. In short these forests of ancient and crumbling trees
fairly teemed at the right season with varied and interesting
bird life. The Swallows and Grackles were especially 
abundant. At the mouth of the Cambridge River and about the
outlet or the lake, where they bred in colonies, I have
seen them rise and circle in swarms when disturbed by
the report of a gun. The Woodpeckers, although scarcely
less numerous, were more scattered and hence somewhat
less conspicuous. The Ducks were least conspicuous of all
for they were too wary to often show themselves about their
nests unless when startled from them.
  Those were indeed halcyon days for the ornithologists
who visited Lake Umbagog in late May or early June
and who knew how to work the stub forests systematically
and intelligently for rare bird nests. One might then
find - and take without let or hindrance, for the
game laws were little regarded and seldom or never enforced -
eggs of five or six species of Woodpeckers and of almost
as many different kinds of Ducks, besides those of the
Brown Creeper, the Canada and the White-breasted Nuthatch,
the Bronzed Grackle, the White-bellied Swallow and
the Kingbirds, with perhaps, occasionally, a set laid by
the locally rare Crested Flycatcher or by the Barred Owl.
I do not mean to say, of course, that the eggs of all these
species could be obtained by any one collector, however
energetic and fortunate, in a single season. Some of the
birds were far from numerous and it was not always
easy to find nests of even the common kinds among
thousands of stubs almost every other one of which was