93 2 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[June 13, 1908. 
downward slant does in still air, and we have 
the apparent paradox of a bird sailing against 
the wind and at the same time rising. It is per¬ 
haps a little difficult to get hold of the matter 
in one’s mind without first remembering that 
the earth has nothing to do with the matter, 
except to be always pulling down on the bird 
and the wind always lifting it. To the bird it 
must always seem that the air is still, and that 
his sailings always have a downward slant, and 
so they do as regards the wind itself. If the 
bird were to lose some light feathers, and we 
could watch them, they would be hundreds of 
feet above the bird in a few minutes, and the 
bird could not rise to them without flapping his 
wings. O. H. Hampton. 
Manitoba Notes. 
Carman, Man., June x .—Editor Forest and 
Stream: The Canada goose arrived here from 
the south the last week in March and the first 
two weeks in April, and fed on the burnt stub¬ 
bles where the threshing machines had stood 
in the threshing of the 1907 crop of wheat and 
barley. The wavies came in about the 20th of 
April, but because our marsh east of here had 
been drained by the Government ditch, there 
was not much water for them hereabouts, so 
they went west and north, where there was 
plenty of water. 
Our taxidermist recently received a fine 
whistling swan, and has recently mounted sev¬ 
eral golden eagles and snowy owls. 
The Dufferin Leader recently printed an earn¬ 
est letter from the president of the Manitoba 
Game Protective Association, telling of the 
ravages of the crow. He reports that a farmer 
who had found seven prairie chickens’ nests last 
year observed before hatching time came that 
six out of the seven had been robbed by crows. 
Another man found that eleven out of thirteen 
grouse nests had been robbed, and the writer 
of the letter believes that the damage done by 
the crows in the Birtle district in 1907 caused 
the great scarcity of ducks and grouse there 
last fall. Of course the crows are very de¬ 
structive to the nests of the domestic fowl 
whenever these are placed away from the house 
or out anywhere in the hills. The writer' recom¬ 
mends crow shooting as a sport, and believes 
that the destruction of these birds will tend 
greatly to protect the game birds. 
Crows are certainly becoming very numerous 
here and elsewhere in this country, wherever 
there is underbrush or willow timber, where they 
build their nests. In 1882, when I traveled 
through different sections, it was a rare thing 
to see a crow in the district. Now they are 
numerous. 
Hunting for young coyotes is all the rage here 
now. The method of securing them is to take 
a collie dog and go to the haunts of the coyote 
here, generally in thick scrubby undergrowth. 
When the old coyote sees the collie, she runs 
to the den where the young are, and the collie 
follows and barks at the den. Then the hunters 
dig out the young. Alexander Aimo and his 
son dug out fourteen from two dens one day 
last week. Another man got thirty-five, and 
this man has brought in in all ninety-four. 
There is a bounty of two dollars on each coyote 
paid by the Government, by agents appointed in 
several districts throughout the Province. 
W. H. R. 
[It is evident that the method of destroying 
wolves and coyotes recommended by Mr. Ver¬ 
non Bailey, of the Biological Survey, is being 
practiced with success in Manitoba. —Editor.] 
Starlings on Staten Island. 
Princes Bay, S. I., June 2 . —Editor Forest 
and Stream: In reply to an inquiry by ‘-‘G.” 
in Forest and Stream, of May 16, about the 
English starling, I will inform him that on the 
sparsely settled parts of Staten Island the star¬ 
ling is quite abundant. There is a pair nest¬ 
ing in a cosy nook in the old-fashioned house 
I occupy. They seem to keep the sparrows away 
from that side of the house. I know of another 
nest near the beach in a large poplar-tree. I 
have seen as many as 200 starlings in one flock 
during the winter months. H. L. A. 
The Return of the Beaver. 
Easton, Pa., June 4 . — Editor Forest and 
Stream: When the trout season opened this 
spring in Pennsylvania the early fishermen— 
those whose enthusiasm brooks no delay, or to 
whom the wintry gales and flying snow offer 
no impediment—were rewarded by the discovery 
of the first evidences of the return of the beaver 
to the waters of the Pocono region, from which 
they had been driven so long ago that not even 
a tradition of their former presence was shared 
by the present inhabitants of this locality. 
To be sure there were suggestions of such a 
prior occupancy conveyed by the nomenclature 
of certain places, the numerous beaver meadows, 
which seemed to indicate that at some time in 
the remote past the twilight stillness of these 
mountain streams may have echoed to the re¬ 
sounding slap of a beaver’s tail, but aside from 
this no one now living could truthfully say he 
had ever met one who could tell when the beaver 
formerly built their dams and reared their young 
in the waters of this region. 
My experience is confined to the Bushkill 
Creek, which flows through Pike and Monroe 
counties, Pennsylvania, and gives up its life at 
the quaint little village of the same name, where 
it flows into the Delaware. About fifteen miles 
from its mouth and a short distance above the 
site of the old Coolbaugh Mills, is the first evi¬ 
dence noticed. There several small trees and 
saplings are cut down, the largest being about- 
eight inches in diameter. The cuttings show 
distinctly the characteristic broad chisel-like 
mark of the beaver’s teeth, and one is reminded 
by the smooth surface of the groove how ex¬ 
tremely sharp their incisors must be. 
Two miles further up, at what is locally 
known as the Cook Field, are two young poplar 
trees, six and seven inches in diameter respec¬ 
tively, which have been felled, and a mile above, 
where the Bright Creek comes in, there are 
fifteen or twenty saplings lying prostrated. In 
looking at the number of trees that are cut one 
is apt to wonder what could have been the ob¬ 
ject of the beaver in cutting so many, in such 
an apparently purposeless manner, since no 
attempt to construct a dam had been made and 
very few of the branches had been denuded of 
the bark. 
Rumor has it that at other places in the coun¬ 
try the presence of beaver has been observed, 
notably at Mud Run, but my observation is con¬ 
fined to the places mentioned above. 
Fortunately the beaver in this State are pro¬ 
tected by a heavy fine, so there is some hope 
that as the years go by they will again come 
into their own, and the fisherman of that day 
be rewarded as he wends his way homeward in 
the dusk of the lengthening days by seeing, as 
he rounds some bend, a faint ripple on the still 
waters, and the disappearance of a dark object 
which shall tell him he has been very close to 
one of the shy wood creatures, and will move 
on with an added memory to those already 
gained of doings connected with the wild wood 
and to be lived over again when the acrid smoke 
of the camp-fire has given place to the open fire 
of his city home. R. K. B. 
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supply you regularly. 
CAIRNS OF CASE-MAKING CADDIS WORMS. 
The bou’der photographed was about six inches long and was left high and dry by the drouth in the Catskills 
last August. 
