"It is not true, as Aristotle asserts, that the same 

 leader heads the migrant column during the whole 

 of their journey." Frederick II, The Art of Falconry 



8 



Flight Trails South 



The sunrise of October 11, 1951, was bright 

 and cloudless. Art Paulson sat in the bow with his gun across his knee while 

 I watched from the stern. There was not a breath of wind. Reflections with- 

 out a mar. The only birds were a few late bluewings returning now and 

 again to the reeds. Shortly after seven o'clock we saw a band of ducks com- 

 ing out of the northwest so high that they appeared only as a thread in the 

 sky. More followed, and during the next fifteen minutes we counted twenty 

 flocks. Suddenly the calm broke. Without so much as a breeze for an intro- 

 duction, a rough wind struck from the northwest, quickly churning the 

 waters of the bay to whitecaps. Now the volume of the flight increased so 

 that any glance found at least a dozen flocks. The travelers were strewn far 

 and wide across the sky, all moving at the same speed, all arriving from the 

 northwest, all crossing to disappear into the southeast. We identified Can- 

 vasback and Redhead, Lesser Scaup and Mallard, and there were also Can- 

 ada Geese. The speed of the wind was measured at twenty-five to thirty 

 miles per hour on the ground, and the ground speed of the migrants ap- 

 peared to be more than twice that. Any given group flew quickly out of 

 sight, but new birds continued to arrive from the northwest so that the flow 

 was unbroken. Local ducks were put to air by the wind, some flying to pro- 

 tective shores, others rising to join the migration. James F. Bell, who was 

 four miles to the east, told me later that he had watched the flight go over 

 in the same volume, and from other gunners I learned that the movement 

 crossed over the whole marsh. The passage continued until just before noon, 

 and, placing our estimates on the number of birds we saw crossing Delta, I 

 guessed that some 200,000 waterfowl had flown over the marsh in the heavi- 

 est morning migration I have ever seen. 



More typically, these mass migrations go through in the afternoon, at- 



95 



