MICHIGAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 
157 
NOTES ON THE BIRDS OF THE MICHIGAN FOREST RESERVE. 
EARL H. FROTHINGHAM. 
The following records were made during two seasons spent by the 
writer while engaged in a forest survey of the Michigan state reserves. 
They are confined to the north reserve, an area of about 18,000 acres 
adjacent to the north end of Higgins Lake in Roscommon and Craw¬ 
ford counties. The list of seventy-four species is without doubt very 
incomplete, but is offered as a beginning for a more detailed study of 
the bird life of this region. 
The conditions which exist on the reserve are briefly as follows: 
The climate of this part of Michigan is moderate, characterized by 
cool summers and by rather long, cold winters. Frost occurs every 
month in the year. Precipitation is frequent in both summer and win¬ 
ter and amounts to about thirty-five inches per year. 
In common with all of northern Michigan the north reserve possesses 
a topography of glacial origin. Near the lake the surface is rolling, 
consisting of long sand ridges with intervening swales and extensive 
cedar swamps. A short distance north of the lake the country is flat 
over wide areas which are known as jack pine plains from the frequent 
occurrence here of this tree. There are numerous potholes scattered 
through the reserve, two or three of which contain standing water. 
Drainage is by short creeks into the lake and by a larger one, Beaver 
Creek, into the Au Sable River, some nine miles to the east. 
There formerly existed over a large part of the reserve a heavy stand 
of White and Norway pine. The almost complete disappearance of these 
trees is to be attributed less to actual lumbering than to the frequent 
fires that have since swept over the land. Pine saplings, which are 
unable to replace burned stems by sprouts, quickly succumb to these 
fires, while the hardwoods—consisting mainly of oak and maple—send 
up shoots again and again until their vitality is exhausted, when they 
in turn give way to the encroachment of sedge, sweet fern, huckleberry 
and prairie willow. 
With the introduction of fire protection, a succession somewhat the 
reverse of the above is to be expected. As may be noticed at various 
places through the reserve, spots which for any reason have escaped 
recent fire will often bear thickets of young popple and fire cherry, the 
former seeded down by the wind,, the latter by birds. Wherever such 
protected patches occur near pine trees a prolific reproduction of pine 
is almost sure to take place. Gradually, owing to the greater adapti- 
bility of soil and climatic conditions to pine than to hardwood produc¬ 
tion, the former type of forest will become dominant, and the hardwoods 
will once more fill their subordinate position as a stunted undergrowth. 
With the types of vegetation which mark the different stages of the 
plant succession just described there seem to be correlated certain defi- 
