TRAVELS OF WATERFOWL 



a generalized ability to form a family association, the specific features of 

 which are not inherited" (Cushing and Ramsay, 1949:82). 



Fabricius (1951), who studied imprinting in wild ducks, concluded 

 that "it is not possible to draw a sharp line between imprinting and ordinary 

 conditioning." Thorpe (1944:80) has proposed extending "the original 

 definition of imprinting to cover the possibility of attachment not to a living 

 object but to the immediate locality first perceived by the newly emerged 

 organism." I agree in principle with this suggestion, but the term itself, "im- 

 printing," is, I think, now so widely applied to the parent-child relationship 

 that the word can hardly be given a wider connotation without misunder- 

 standing. 



Visual images of the surroundings as well as of the parent must be im- 

 pressed upon the young bird from the very beginning of its life story. In 

 the captive pens, ducklings become familiar with the arrangement of the 

 brooder enclosures within a few hours. Ducklings only a day or two old 

 move in an oriented manner about the complex pattern of the Station pond. 

 In the wild, ducklings may range widely with their parents ( Evans, 1951 ; 

 Dzubin, 1954), but there is evidence of an oriented use of the ponds and 

 sloughs in which they live. I have found parentless ducklings ranging on 

 the same part of the marsh throughout their growing period. 



A remarkable evidence of retentiveness was shown in the behavior of 

 several captive-reared Pintails at Delta. In the days before the establish- 

 ment of captive ponds at Delta, juvenile hand-reared ducks were removed 

 eight or ten miles away, where they were given their freedom at the edge 

 of the lake or marsh. On three different occasions a young Pintail flew 

 home, where, on our return, we found it walking around the pen, trying 

 to enter the place where it had been reared. On one of these occasions there 

 were no birds in the pen ; hence the youngster could not have been guided 

 there by the voice of companions. Chance, I believe, directed these juve- 

 niles to fly west along the lakeshore, and they recognized their familiar home 

 as they passed by. 



Manitoba's premier, the Honorable D. L. Campbell, told me of the ex- 

 perience of a friend, Wes Owens, who raised a brood of young Mallards 

 in the family farmyard. After taking wing, they gradually expanded their 

 range away from the farm, going out of sight to the wild country beyond. 

 But each night at dusk they returned to the domestic confines of their first 

 home. Peter Ward raised a Mallard female at Delta, giving it full-winged 

 freedom in midsummer. It soon disappeared from the local scene, but one 



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