"Homing is a return to a place already familiar. 

 William Rowan, The Riddle of Migration 



Homeward Migration 



A small platform rises above the north shore 

 of Cadham Bay, and another railed perch overlooks the marsh from the 

 top of Kirchoffer Lodge. Spring evenings we wait at these lookouts to watch 

 the parade of waterfowl leaving Delta in migration. A few ducks, perhaps, 

 will reach their destinations before the last tinge has left the sky, but for 

 many others the evening's flight is but another step in the long journey 

 home. It is eighteen hundred miles from Delta to the mouth of the Macken- 

 zie River, where some must go. 



The departure in the heaviest passages of spring occurs just after sun- 

 down. On northern prairies twilight and dusk linger more than three hours 

 after the late-April sun has set; at eleven o'clock there still remains a faint 

 sunglow in the northwest on cloudless nights. On evenings of heavy migra- 

 tion there is a steady flow of birds away from Delta until dark. After dark- 

 ness has settled completely and through the black hours of morning the 

 movement of transients may be heard overhead; but this night schedule 

 never attains the volume of the twilight migration. 



In the departure of the travelers there is no circling upward. They take 

 off from the bays and at once set their course, climbing at a shallow angle. 

 Birds leaving the north edge of the marsh cross the ridge just above the 

 trees, while those from the south shore have climbed several hundred feet 

 by the time they gain the lake. The migrants strike out over the open lake 

 without hesitation, most of them making the crossing from the marsh at 

 passes, as described in Chapter 1. From ground level, Lake Manitoba appears 

 as a wide, frozen sea, the far shorelines below the horizon except during mi- 

 rage. From the height of one hundred feet, however, the west shore and 

 Big Point rise into view, and at two or three hundred feet the Riding Moun- 

 tains may be seen. 



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