SIEUR DE MONTS PUBLICATIONS

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Natural Bird Gardens on Mount
Desert Island

ISSUED BY
THE WILD GARDENS OF ACADIA

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“BAR HARBOR, MAINE

SIEUR DE MONTS PUBLICATIONS

XV

Natural Bird Gardens on Mount
Desert Island

Epwarp Hower Forsusu

Massachusetts State Ornithologist, Author of ‘Useful Birds and
Their Protection,’ a book placed by order of the Massachusetts
Legislature in every Public Inbrary and High School in_ the
State; Author of “Game Birds and Wild Fowl.”

When America was first discovered the coast of Maine
was the habitat of myriads of land and water birds.
Marvelous accounts of their abundance have come down
to us in the narratives of the early voyagers, and it is
indeed a region wonderfully fitted to be a great nesting
ground and feeding place for both land and water
species. The coast line is so broken with deep, irregular
indentations and the islands lying off it are so numerous
that from the mouth of the Kennebec at Casco Bay to that
of the St. Croix at the Canadian boundary it presents to
the wash of the tides more than 2,500 miles of shore. All
along the coast there are broad flats and salt-marshes
extending deeply inland which are swept over twice a
day by the tide’s great flood, rising 12 feet or more in
the Mount Desert region; and every recurring tide
brings in with it and deposits on these flats and marshes
quantities of floating marine life, while countless animal
and vegetable forms grow on and in their fertile bottoms.

In early days, accordingly, when every tide went out

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great multitudes of birds of many species found a boun-
teous repast spread for them along that vast stretch of
coast. Yet, although food conditions are almost as favor-
able as they were when Champlain first explored these
shores, only a pitiable remnant of the birds remains.

The continual hunting and shooting of birds through-
out the Atlantic States and the Maritime Provinces, with
the destruction of their nests, eggs, and young for food
and for commercial purposes, has swept the coast lke
a destructive storm, annihilating far the greater part
of the bird life that formerly existed there. The multi-
tude of swans, snow geese, great auks, wild turkeys, and
wild pigeons that were seen by the earlier explorers are
eone, and with them are also gone the Labrador ducks,
eranes, spruce partridges, and Hskimo curlew, while
many other shore birds and water fowl have become rare
almost to disappearance, although prompt measures yet
would bring them back.

It now seems as though the tide were turning and
that the destructive evils of the past may at last be
stayed, but the enactment of laws alone will not secure
results. <All students of the subject now agree that no
plan for the preservation of birds in any country can
succeed unless adequate and well-selected bird refuges
are provided—absolute sanctuaries where all shooting or
disturbance is prevented, where the birds that breed
locally can nest in safety, and where migratory birds
that summer in the farther north ean find shelter and
protection on their long migrations.

livery year’s delay counts heavily against the birds.
The forces of destruction are constantly increasing, and
the need of sanctuaries where no shooting will ever be
allowed has grown urgent to the last degree.

The shape and geographical position of the continent
of North America are such that during the migration sea-
son, twice a year, bird-life goes crowding up or down

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this country’s coasts, both east and west. This is due
to the increased width and vast extent of the continent
to the north of us and to the wonderful feeding ground
and natural line of travel offered by the shore to both
land and water birds upon their flight.

From the Bay of Fundy southward along the Atlantic
Coast this effect of concentration during the migration
season is particularly great, and must have rendered
it in the early days, when birds were plentiful, a mar-
velous sight.

Other great highways of migration lie along the Mis-
sissippl Valley and the Pacific Coast, and along all three
of these great natural routes it is essential that bird
reserves and sanctuaries be established. But extensive
tracts have been already set aside for this on the Pacific
coast, and reservations too, on a great scale, are now
in process of establishment in the Mississippi region.

It remains for us in the East, where the bird hfe was
so abundant formerly and the need came earliest, to do
like work; and nowhere is there work more urgent to be
done, nowhere is the present need so eritical.

The tendency of most migratory birds nesting on the
eastern third of the continent is to fly southeastward
from their nesting grounds until they reach the coast
and then to follow it on southward.

Thus when the autumn frosts come, migratory birds
from Greenland, from all the shores of Baffins Bay,
from Labrador and Newfoundland and the wild interior
pour their diminished legions down toward the Maine
coast; in the springtime they return and spread out
northward from it.

Mount Desert Island, accordingly, unique in being the
only mountainous tract thrust promimently out imto the
sea and rich in meadow lands and valleys, offers an im-
portant landmark and admirable resting place for migra-
tory birds of every kind—birds of sea and shore, the
useful insect-eating birds of cultivated lands and gar-

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dens, the birds of inland waters, woods and marshes.

The fauna and flora of the coast line at this point are
largely of the Canadian type and its birds are repre-
sented here with corresponding fullness. Nevertheless,
a number of Hudsonian plants grow upon the Island
also and form breeding places for certain birds charae-
teristic of that northern area. This is one of the very
few points on the Atlantic coast of the United States
where portions of this far northern flora and fauna can
be found at all, and it is the southernmost of all.

Following the coast up from the West and South, a
number of the birds of the Alleghenian and Transition
zones reach the Island also, and we thus find at least four
faunal areas represented in summer at this unique spot,
while a number of Arctic and other northern. birds fre-
quent the region in winter, at which season the Alaskan
eagle and the snowy owl appear.

Remarkable opportunities exist here, accordingly, for
inducing birds of many kinds to remain and nest upon
the Island, where they can be fostered, studied, and pro-
tected. For the birds of farm and garden it offers con-
ditions that might readily be made ideal in certain sec-
tions. The forest cover, with its under shrubs, provides
admirable nesting places for all woodland species. For
the birds of inland and of tidal waters the place is singu-
larly favorable, while the vertical cliffs yet call to nest
the raven and the eagle.

No northern situation was ever better fitted to grow
a great variety of fruiting plants for bird food. The
remarkable horticultural qualities of the Island have
long been recognized, and both wild and cultivated shrubs
fruit there in extraordinary profusion. In the broad
heath which extends from the Bar Harbor region south-
ward to the mountains; in the wild gorge beyond with
bottom tarn which makes a natural highway for men and
birds alike between the Island’s northern and southern
shores; and around the old beaver-pool ground out by the

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Ice-sheet at the northern foot of Newport Mountain, there
are wonderful opportunities for natural bird gardens.

Here, in fertile soil washed down from the granite
heights above and constantly renewed, open spaces may
readily be covered with the native food-providing shrubs
and trees, such as the alternate-leaved cornel, the wild
service berry or shad blow which is so beautiful in its
springtime flowering, the red-berried ilexes and richly
fruiting thorns that bring such glowing color into the
northern fall, interspersed with thick bushes suitable for
nesting.

Here, too, there are excellent opportunities for grow-
ing along the banks of streams and ponds the seed-bearing
herbaceous plants on which the marsh and water birds
subsist so largely, and an admirable chance for creating
nesting islands upon flooded marshlands that would form
ideal breeding places for meadow and aquatic birds.
Water in every form is here abundant—in springs and
streams and open pools—while the deep, rich soil of the
adjoining swamp and swale already produces plants in
plenty to entice the birds that haunt such places, and
little more is needed than to give these plants a chance
to make their best development.

And here, of all places, an admirable opportunity pre-
sents itself for the establishment of a bird-study station
combined with bird protection, such as has revolutionized
abroad in recent years the methods formerly in use for
the encouragement and protection of bird life.

At such a station the best methods of bird protection,
food supply and propagation in a northern region would
be studied out and given practical trial, and from such
a station the results obtained would be published widely
for the benefit of the country.

Work along this line is greatly needed in America,
and carried out at Mount Desert, where so strong a tide
of summer travels sets each year and where so many
people of influence and education, drawn from the whole

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country over, spend their summers, such work would
have exceptional value.

Nor would the presence of people in the reservation
tend to drive out the birds, provided they were not
molested. Some even of the wilder birds are learning
now to make their home in city parks where they receive
protection, and many birds might easily be attracted to
a region so favorable for their shelter, sustenance, and
nesting as Mount Desert Island.

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