A year among the trees

by Wilson Flagg

ANIMALS OF THE PRIMITIVE FOREST.

European travellers in this country frequently allude to the American forest as remarkable for its solitude and deficiency of animal life. Captain Hardy remarks that a foreigner is struck with surprise, when rambling through the bush, at the scarcity of birds, rabbits, and hares, and is astonished when in the deepest recesses of the wild country he sees but little increase of their numbers. When paddling his canoe through lake and river, he will startle but few pairs of exceedingly timid waterfowl where in Europe they swarm in multitudes. This scarcity of animals, I would remark, is not peculiar to the American wilderness. The same fact has been observed in extensive forests both in Europe and Asia; and in proportion as the traveller penetrates into their interiors he finds a smaller number of animals of almost every species. Birds, insects, and quadrupeds will multiply, like human beings, in a certain ratio with the progress of agriculture, so long as there remains a sufficiency of wild wood to afford them a refuge and a home. They use the forest chiefly for shelter, and the open grounds for forage; the woods are their house, the meadows their farm.

I had an opportunity for observing these facts very early in life, when making a pedestrian tour through several of the States. I commenced my journey in autumn, and being alone, I was led to take note of many things which, had any one accompanied me, would have escaped my observation. After passing a few weeks of the winter in Nashville, I directed my course through Tennessee and Virginia, and was often led through extensive ranges of forest. I never saw birds in any part of the United States so numerous as in the woods adjoining the city of Nashville, which was surrounded with immense cornfields and cotton plantations. But while walking through the country I could not help observing the scarcity of birds and small quadrupeds in the woods whenever I was at a long distance from any village or habitation. Sometimes night would draw near before I had reached a hamlet or farm-house, where I might take lodging. On such occasions the silence of the woods increased my anxiety, which was immediately relieved upon hearing the cardinal or the mocking-bird, whose cheerful notes always indicated my approach to cultivated fields and farms.

That this scarcity of animal life is not peculiar to the American forest we have the testimony of St. Pierre, who says of the singing birds: “It is very remarkable that all over the globe they discover an instinct which attracts them to the habitations of man. If there be but a single hut in the forest, all the singing birds of the vicinity come and settle round it. Nay, they are not to be found except in places which are inhabited. I have travelled more than six hundred leagues through the forests of Russia, but never met with small birds except in the neighborhood of villages. On making the tour of fortified places in Russian Finland with the general officers of the corps of engineers with which I served, we travelled sometimes at the rate of twenty leagues a day without seeing on the road either village or bird. But when we perceived the sparrows fluttering about, we concluded we must be near some inhabited place. In this indication we were never once deceived.”

It may be remarked, however, that birds and quadrupeds do not seek the company of man when they congregate near his habitations. They are attracted by the increased amount of all their means of subsistence that follows the cultivation of the land. The granivorous birds, no less than the insect-feeders, are benefited by the extension of agriculture. Even if no cereal grains were raised, the cultivated fields would supply them, in the product of weeds alone, more sustenance than a hundred times the same area in forest. Before there were any settlements of white men in this country, birds and small quadrupeds must have congregated chiefly about the wooded borders of prairies, on the banks of rivers, in fens and cranberry meadows, and around the villages of the red man. Their numbers over the whole continent were probably much smaller than at the present time, notwithstanding the merciless destruction of them by gunners and trappers.

There are but few tribes of animals that may be supposed to thrive only in the wild forest; and even these, if unmolested by man, would always find a better subsistence in a half-cultivated country abounding in woods of sufficient extent to afford them shelter and a nursery for their young, than in a continuous wilderness. Beasts of prey, however, are destroyed by man in the vicinity of all his settlements, to protect himself and his property from their attacks, and game-birds and animals of the chase are recklessly hunted both for profit and amusement. In Europe the clearing of the original forest was so gradual that the wild animals multiplied more rapidly with the progress of agriculture. Civilization advanced so slowly, and the arts made such tardy and gradual progress, that all species enjoyed considerable immunity from man. The game-birds and animals of the chase were not only preserved in forests attached to princely estates, but they were also protected by game-laws at a time when such laws were less needful because so few of the peasantry were accustomed to the use of the gun. While the royal forests yielded these creatures a shelter and abode, the cultivated lands near their bounds afforded them subsistence; and they must have multiplied more rapidly in proportion to the increase of human population than in America after its settlement, where very different circumstances and events were witnessed.

America was colonized and occupied by civilized people, and the forests were swept away with a rapidity unprecedented in the history of man. Every pioneer was a hunter provided with guns and ammunition; every male member of his family over seven years of age was a gunner and a trapper. The sparse inhabitants of the forest, which if unmolested, as in the early period of European civilization, would have multiplied in proportion to their increased means of subsistence, have been, on the contrary, shot by the gunner, insnared by the trapper, and wantonly destroyed by boys for amusement, until some species have been nearly exterminated. Instead of increasing in a ratio with the supplies of their natural food, many tribes of them are now more scarce than they were in the primitive forest. The small birds alone, whose prolific habits and diminutive size were their protection, have greatly multiplied.

But even if birds and quadrupeds were unmolested by man, there are some tribes that would prefer to reside in the deep wood, while others would fix their abode in orchards and gardens. The wild pigeon has not been favored in any respect by the clearing of the forest. The food of this species is abundantly supplied in the wilds of nature in the product of beechen woods, hazel copses, groves of the chinquapin oak, and of the shores of lakes and arms of the sea covered with Canada rice and the maritime pea-vine. Their immense powers of flight enable them to transport themselves to new feeding-grounds after any present stock is exhausted, and to wing their way over hundreds of miles between their different repasts. This cannot be said of the grouse, the turkey, and the partridge, whose feeble powers of flight confine them to a narrow extent of territory; and these birds must have been frequently robbed of their farinaceous stores by flocks of wild pigeons during their itinerant foraging.

There are many species of birds which we associate with the wild wood because they breed and find shelter there, but if we watched their habits we should learn that even these solitary birds make the cultivated grounds their principal feeding-places. Such are the quail, the partridge, and very many of our game-birds. The quail and the partridge are omnivorous, but, like our common poultry, are more eager to seize a grub or an insect than a grain of corn. A potato-field is hardly less valuable to a flock of quails than a field of corn, and affords more sustenance to the snipe and the woodcock than any other grounds. But these birds, as well as others, have diminished as those natural advantages have increased that should promote their multiplication.

Even our sylvias and thrushes, the most timid of all the winged tribe, birds hardly ever seen except in lonely woods, multiply with the clearing of the country and the increased abundance of their insect food. The vesper thrushes, that shun the presence of man, and will become silent in their musical evening if the rustling of the bushes indicates the approach of a human footstep, are more numerous in the woods of Cambridge than in any other part of the country. These are chiefly of maple, filled with underbrush, and afford the birds a harbor and a shelter, while the adjoining fields, in a state of the highest tillage, supply them plentifully with their natural food, consisting of worms and the larvæ of insects.