July 28, 1906.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
i39 
Chat About Birds and Fish. 
Saginaw, Mich., July 14 .-—Editor Forest and 
Stream: I wish you would mail to me one extra 
copy of your edition of July 14. I want to cut 
out what John Burroughs says about the passenger 
pigeon, to use it in the book on the passenger 
pigeon I intend to have published. I have held 
my MS. for some time, investigating the various 
reports that keep cropping out; I have not 
hurried, for I wanted to be sure I had everything 
about the wild pigeon before I did anything with 
it. Last year Michigan was full of reports, a 
good deal like those Mr. Burroughs has gotten 
together, and I investigated them as well as I 
could, as also did Mr. Adams, Curator of the 
University of Michigan, and we came to the con¬ 
clusion they were mistakes, as far as the large 
flocks reported were concerned, but probably not 
mistakes as far as one or two reports of half a 
dozen or a pair of birds having been seen, and I 
am well convinced that there are no large flocks 
of pigeons left, but in all probability there are a 
few scattering birds still frequenting our northern 
woodlands each year. 
There is also another point that my investiga¬ 
tion has shown, and that is that the common im¬ 
pression that the wild pigeon disappeared in a 
day, or between one season and the next, is 
erroneous. After the last great nesting in Michi¬ 
gan, in 1878, wild pigeons still existed for twenty 
years or more, and they were trapped and sent 
to the market as late as 1893. 
There are certain kinds of plover and curlew 
that, at a distance, in flock flight are easily mis¬ 
taken for the wild pigeon. In Michigan my in¬ 
vestigation shows that nearly all the reported 
pigeons have turned out to be the Carolina dove, 
which has become a frequenter of the northern 
part of the lower Peninsula of Michigan in com¬ 
paratively recent years. 
Since I have started to talk to you by mail, 
I may as well tell the readers of Forest and 
Stream two or three little things that came to 
my notice while recently fishing for salmon on 
the Grand Cascapedia River, Quebec. One day, 
in fishing the Pool-in-the-Woods, I noticed a 
wood duck circling, and finally she disappeared 
into the main trunk of a large elm tree standing 
on the bank. Then I saw there was a hole about 
thirty feet from the ground, about as big as the 
crown of one’s hat. It was nesting time, about 
the middle of June. I called it my wood duck’s 
nest and was watching it with interest in hopes 
I could catch her, bringing her brood to the 
water. A few days passed, and fishing the Ice 
House Pool just next below the Pool-in-the- 
Woods on a perfectly still day, we heard a crash, 
and soon pieces of branches and parts of an elm 
tree began floating by. From the great mass, _we 
knew a large tree had fallen. On investigation, 
I found it was my wood duck’s nest that had met 
disaster. The gradual undermining of the bank 
had at last over-balanced the tree, and notwith¬ 
standing the day before had been very windy, 
it had waited for this still day to enact the 
tragedy. The tree had fallen across a jam of 
logs and was badly broken, and the hole where 
the nest was, as luck would have it, of 
course, was down and in the water. Whether 
any of the little ones were hatched I do 
not know, but a few days afterwards a 
female duck with one lone duckling was 
noticed some way down stream, and on the fol¬ 
lowing day, my son, fishing fully a mile down 
stream from where the nest was, took a trout that 
weighed pounds. It was so puffed out, that 
he opened it, and lo and behold, there was a 
little duck in it. It was not fully gorged, but 
some of the downy feathers were noticed in the 
trout’s mouth before beginning dissection. 
I was not contented to let this duck episode pass 
in this way, so I took the next day to hunt 
up another, and going to a little creek or rather 
a channel that runs through the Island, we dis¬ 
covered a wood duck that began circling around 
us. Keeping our boat still, in the course of fifteen 
or twenty minutes it had made forty or fifty circles, 
always with a certain clump of trees in the center. 
At last it pitched into an old birch, was out 
again in an instant and down into the tall grass 
of the meadow. It was raining, and the grass 
was wet, but I hunted the best I could to find 
her, firmly convinced she had taken her brood 
from the tree down into the meadow, and had 
them securely hidden, and was keeping so quiet, 
that although I possibly may have walked very 
close to her, there was no commotion to indicate 
the presence of the mother and her offspring. 
The next day I went to the bogan again and 
found a wood duck mother with seven or eight 
little ones swimming around her. 
Nearly every evening I saw numbers of dusky 
ducks or black mallards coming in from the 
mouth of the river, where evidently they spend 
the day on the salt marsh. They were coming 
to the little creeks and the bogans that are so 
frequent along the Grand Cascapedia, back into 
the mucky spring holes on the tarms and fields, 
evidently coming there to spend the night. 
The wood ducks have a hard time to rear their 
young on this river, for not only do the mink 
and trout and other wild things prey upon them, 
but I understand it is the custom of the guardians 
of the club waters up the river to shoot all the 
ducks they see on the pretense that they destroy 
the young salmon. I hope this report is not 
true, for certainly dusky ducks and wood ducks 
are not fish eaters and do no harm. There are, 
however, a number of sheldrakes on the river 
and there may be cause for exterminating them. 
The salmon fishing was good this year, not only 
on the Grand Cascapedia, but other Quebec 
streams, so I hear. My friend, Mr. C. H. Davis 
of this city, who leases the Little Pabos, accom¬ 
panied by G. B. Morley of this city, spent a very 
successful week on that river, taking fifty-four 
salmon for the two rods. They could have taken 
many more, but Mr. Davis sets a limit to the 
number he will take out of his stream 
each year, consequently they took that number 
and quit. These fish are not large, how¬ 
ever; rarely is one of 20 pounds taken, and this 
year, I believe, their average was somewhere be¬ 
tween seven and eight pounds, for it is a stream 
for fishing mainly from the bank, and without 
a canoe, and they take many of their fish on a 
trout rod, so one’s imagination does not have to 
be stretched much to picture this as royal sport. 
On the Grand Cascapedia the largest fish I 
heard of this year, was taken by C. H. Barnes, 
of Boston, weighing 49 pounds. Mr. R. W. 
Paterson of Lenox, Mass., took one 37-pound 
fish on a seven ounce trout rod and was an hour 
and ten minutes killing it. 
I had rather an odd experience one night. 
After fishing my pool for salmon without result, 
I told my guide I had been exasperated enough 
by what I took to be a large trout rising on the 
smooth water quite to one side of where the 
salmon would ordinarily have been expected. It 
was unquestionably feeding, for it would not 
jump clear out of the water, but would come to 
the top and make a swirl, for that motion we 
know so well indicates the feeding of a big trout. 
It was early in the evening, just after sundown, 
and myriads of flies were on the water. At the 
second cast I had a rise but he missed it. The 
next cast he came with a rush, and I hooked him, 
and in about twenty minutes in a run down 
stream three-quarters of a mile through rapid 
water, and after three or four leaps higher than 
a man’s head, I had the fish safely in an ordinary 
seized trout landing net. 
It was a bright salmon weighing 8 pounds. I 
took this on a rod weighing about 6H ounces, 
a trout reel and trout leader, and the queer 
freak of it all was, that it was on a No. 8 sproat, 
Professor fly, with quite a delicate snell. Cutting 
the salmon open the next day, I found six flies 
or water bugs of some kind in him. I put them 
in alcohol and they were to be turned over to 
E. M. Davis for further investigation. 
To my mind this salmon wes surely feeding. 
It also took the small trout fly eagerly. 
I have made this letter long, and given you 
stories on a wide range of subjects, but one has 
a lot of things to talk about after coming back 
from a fishing trip on the Grand Cascapedia. 
Saginaw, Mich., July 21. —Several days ago, I 
wrote you in relation to the finding of flies and 
water bugs in the stomach of a salmon I was 
certain I saw feeding. At the time the dissec¬ 
tion was made, my son was certain that these in¬ 
sects were not in the stomach of the salmon, but 
in the alimentary canal and intestines. At any 
rate, the specimens were sent to Dr. Weir 
Mitchell who was then fishing on the river, and 
to-day I have the following report from him 
through my friend Mr. Harvey: 
“For Billy, Junior’s information I want to say 
that his theory regarding salmon food is correct. 
Dr. Weir Mitchell was consulted regarding the 
specimens taken from the 8-pound salmon’s in¬ 
testines, and he says that food is often found in 
salmon, which they probably bring in from the 
sea or possibly take after reaching fresh water, 
but it is never digested after the fish reaches 
fresh water; There is no question about a sal¬ 
mon’s digestive apparatus becoming useless after 
coming into fresh water.” Peter Barter says that 
salmon taken in the nets in salt water are some¬ 
times full of small fish, but he never has seen 
such a thing in fresh water. I have given the 
readers of Forest and Stream the facts in the 
case and they can take the information for what 
it is worth. I think the 8-pound salmon was 
catching flies all right, but whether he was spit¬ 
ting them out or just swallowing them for fun 
and not to eat, is another question. 
W. B. Mershon. 
He Saved the Pickerel. 
Theresa, N. Y., July 10.—While trolling for 
black bass and pickerel (lake pike) on Red Lake 
yesterday, Stanley Cheesman, a well-known and 
popular young man of the village, hooked on to 
a good sized “pickerel.” At first the fish came 
in with the usual meek gameness of its specie, 
then there was a sudden change and Stanley “got 
busy,” and for a few minutes had his hands full 
of a good strong trolling line. Then suddenly 
there appeared on the surface of the water what 
Stanley and his companion thought was the 
annual summer sea serpent. Finally Stanley suc¬ 
ceeded in getting the monster near enough to the 
boat to see that it was a maskinonge with a tail 
a foot wide, that was making all the trouble. 
Then it disappeared under the boat and the line 
caught on some roughness on the bottom, and 
Stanley and companion both worked hard to pre¬ 
vent capsizing; then there was a sudden let-up 
of the commotion, and when the line was freed, 
Stanley took in a three and a half pound pickerel 
badly torn from gills to tail. The fish was 
brought to the village with eleven others of the 
same kind and two black bass, the catch of the day ; 
Evidently there are a few larger maskinonge 
in Red Lake yet, although no small ones are 
taken of late, (and it is all owing to the intro¬ 
duction of the lake pike twenty-two years ago). 
A year ago I wrote you of Guide Dave Tyler’s 
one hour and twenty minutes experience with a 
five foot maskinonge. 
Mr. Wm. Sharp, whose picture you published 
years ago with a 42L2 pound fish on his back, 
has been down to-day, but without success as 
to large fish. J. L. Davison. 
