360 
FOREST AND STREAM 
Sept. 20, 1913. 
Birds About Branchport, N. Y. 
By VERDI BURTCH 
N O spring shooting has certainly been a boon 
to the game and other birds hereabouts, 
and many species have appeared here in 
greater numbers and more have stopped to nest 
than any time in several years before. Early 
in April horned grebes, lesser scaup ducks and 
Bonaparte gulls were here in numbers. The 
ducks and grebes intermingled, swimming and 
diving all along the shore of “the basin,’’ and 
the gulls coursing up and down or swimming 
with the ducks and grebes made a very pretty 
sight; and several times I saw scaups on a log 
or boulder on shore with head under wing con¬ 
tentedly sleeping or standing and arranging their 
plumage. 
The grebes and gulls stayed here about a 
week, and then went on. On the 19th of April 
about 200 Bonaparte gulls came and stayed until 
the 24th, when fifty-six loons were seen all in 
one flock. Another large flock of Bonaparte 
gulls came April 29; then May 9 more were 
here with a lot of ring-billed gulls and ten com¬ 
mon terns. Probably the Bonaparte gulls were 
somewhere on the lake all through April and 
early May, but I have given only the dates when 
they were around Branchport. 
A wounded red-breasted merganser drake 
has been here all summer. Two females stayed 
with him until about. June 20, but were not seen 
after that date. The lesser scaup ducks stayed 
late, the flock dwindling down to eight, then six 
(three ducks and three drakes), and finally to 
three ducks and two drakes, which are here yet 
(Sept. 5). They can be seen any day along “the 
bar” or feeding in “the basin,” and seem to have 
made no attempt to nest. I fear they will be 
“easy meat” for the pot-hunter the first day of 
the open season. 
Blackducks were fairly common in March 
and early April. I saw from three to seven fly¬ 
ing around the marsh nearly every morning or 
evening in May, and the first week in- June saw 
a duck and drake searching around in the flags 
and grass. They acted as though they were 
looking for a good place to build their nest. 
I heard them nearly every night, and made a 
good search for the nest, but failed to find it. 
However, they were successful in raising a 
brood, as a blackduck with eight young was first 
seen about the 7th of July, and I now see them 
every day from my back door step. I keep my 
binoculars hanging handy by the door, and a 
look through them reveals from three to nine 
ducks feeding among the water lilies or stand¬ 
ing on a log or stump in the marsh arranging 
their feathers. There was one family of thick¬ 
billed grebes and three families of Florida galli- 
nules raised here. The young gallinules when 
first hatched are a glossy silky black with a 
silvery beard and are certainly a very comical 
looking chick. When about half grown, they 
change to brownish-gray, shading to almost 
white on the throat and belly. Under tail coverts 
conspicuously white and several white streaks 
on the flanks. In feeding they mingle with the 
blackducks, but while the ducks dive for their 
food, the gallinule pulls the weeds up and along 
on the water, picking off what it wants. 
Bobwhites have been increasing for four or 
five years, and are tolerably common now. Ten 
years ago they were very rare. Ruffed grouse 
are very scarce. Last year I found four nests 
and saw several families, but this year I saw 
very few birds and no young. The ring-necked 
pheasant holds its own in spite of the open 
season. Introduced into this locality compara¬ 
tively a few years ago, it has increased rapidly, 
and now is the most common game bird we 
have. They lay from seven to fourteen eggs 
to a setting, and I have found sets of twenty- 
two and one of twenty-five eggs. These large 
sets may have been laid by two birds, but 
there was only one bird at the nest of twenty- 
five eggs. The set of twenty-two was found 
May 6, 1911. It was in the cattail flags in the 
Branchport marsh, and the marsh had been 
burned over, leaving the eggs charred and ex¬ 
posed. The set of twenty-five I found April 27 
last. The nest was by some dead brush at the 
edge of some woods. It was raining hard when 
I flushed the female, and I stopped just long 
enough to count the eggs, being careful not to 
disturb them, and went on. Three days later 
I went to photograph them and found the nest 
deserted and empty. The nesting season is from 
the middle of April until the middle of July, but 
probably the later ones are birds whose first 
nests were destroyed, or they were disturbed 
in their first nesting. Nearly every nest that 
I have found was afterward deserted. I never 
found but one nest where the female was on 
at my second visit. This nest was found July 8 
this year, and I visited it three times, trying to 
get a photo, but was not successful, and the 
eggs hatched July 11. Many nests are placed 
along the country roads, sometimes only a few 
feet from the beaten track, and one nest was 
found only a few feet from a switch of the 
electric railroad where cars were running every 
day and teams and people were passing fre¬ 
quently. This nest was deserted soon after being 
discovered. 
In the early spring the pheasants have 
numerous wallowing places in the sand along 
the bushy shore of the lake, and by one of these 
I found a fresh egg. 
In July and August they come into the gar¬ 
dens in the village, and I frequently flush from 
one to seven or eight when I walk through my 
garden. The shore birds are very scarce this 
year. Just a few solitary and least sandpipers, 
yellowlegs, semi-palmated plovers and kildeers 
have come in as yet. Only a week or two more 
and the slaughter will begin. They are rapidly 
decreasing in number, and it is a question of 
but a very few years and our beaches and mud¬ 
flats will know them no more. What a pity that 
such beautiful creatures should be exterminated 
just for a few hours’ sport. 
The L t . S. Forest Service is using gaso¬ 
lene railway speeders for fire protection pur¬ 
poses. They follow up trains on steep grades 
where sparks thrown out by forced draft are 
likely to start fires along the right of way. 
Whitney to Lumber His Estate. 
Harry Payne Whitney announced his in¬ 
tention to cut most of the timber on the 100,000 
acres of the Whitney estate. All the wood that 
will make pulp, all the hemlock and all the hard¬ 
wood will be cut. The exceptions of course will 
be the few miles of first growth timber along 
the shore lines of the numerous lakes and ponds 
on the property. Upward of $10,000 has been 
laid out in new buildings, including a new picnic 
camp at the head of Little Tupper Lake, and a 
sawmill. There is also a shingle mill and other 
mills on the estate. New mills of large capacity 
will probably be built. Much of the pulp will 
be taken from the preserve in drives as will the 
hemlock. The hemlock will return something in 
the by-product of hemlock bark, which is used 
for tanning purposes, and which has to be taken 
from the logs before they can be floated in rafts 
or drives. 
It is said that the lumbering operations con¬ 
ducted by the Whitneys, when in partnership with 
Patrick Monahan, they first acquired the prop¬ 
erty, paid for the initial investment in seven 
years. Those forestry operations were held to 
be the finest ever conducted in this country. The 
work was done on a scientific basis, and was 
first laid out by Gifford Pinchot. The Whitney 
estate has been referred to by advocates of 
scientific forestry as an example of what could 
be accomplished in the way of forest conserva¬ 
tion by the use of scientific methods. 
About 30,000 acres of the Whitney estate 
consists of lakes and ponds. Among these are 
Little Tupper Lake, Little and Big Forked 
Lakes and others well known. In spite of the 
large area of water surface, however, there re¬ 
mains about 65,000 acres of woodland, and it is 
this that Mr. Whitney proposes to lumber. 
Light Burning on Pine Forests. 
BY FOREST SERVICE, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF 
AGRICULTURE. 
The effect of light surface fires on pine 
timber is to kill or damage more than half 
of the mature trees, according to findings just 
announced by the U. S. Forest Service. 
The studies were made on the Wallowa 
and Whitman national forests in the Blue 
Mountains of Eastern Oregon. Several typi¬ 
cal stands of Western yellow pine were se¬ 
lected where surface fires had recently burned. 
The region had been periodically run over by 
such fires for a long time. The most recently 
burned areas were carefully surveyed, and all 
the trees individually studied to find the effect 
of the fire. 
As a -result of this survey the following 
facts were verified : A surface fire fells from 
one to three merchantable trees per acre by 
eating out basal fire scars; it makes fire scars 
at the base of 42 per cent., or nearly one-half 
of all the merchantable yellow pines; it ac¬ 
tually burns to death more than 3 per cent, 
of the trees; that is, they are killed by the 
heat of the light surface fire at their bases. 
In short, of the mature trees more than one- 
half of the total stand suffer more or less 
damage. 
The stands were selected to insure results 
representative of the region, according to the 
forest service investigators, who draw the 
conclusion that deliberate light burning in 
such localities to remove brush and under¬ 
growth is distinctly uneconomical, particularly 
since successive surface burnings only height¬ 
en the injury to the trees and make it cumu¬ 
lative. 
