"Time and space exist, only as far as things or events 

 fill them." Charles P. Steinmetz 



6 

 Awareness of Time and Space 



As waterfowl come and go from one part of 

 the marsh to another, there is a regularity in their daily travels. We men 

 have formed the habit of dividing the day into hours of the clock, but birds 

 have no such artificial regulator. The break of dawn is the beginning of the 

 waterfowl day. How well the hunter knows this! Dawn is the wildfowler's 

 joy. No matter how quiet the night or how calm the day that follows, morn- 

 ing twilight brings a flurry of activity to the marsh. Most precise are the 

 Mallards, which leave their shorelines for the stubble fields at the first hint 

 of day; throughout the autumn one may rise to greet this flight, to hear 

 overhead the wings that cannot be seen because the dome of sky is still in 

 darkness. This dawn flight comes out in one full sweep, and most of the 

 birds pass over within a few minutes after one hears the first whicker of 

 wings, each flock following the next so rapidly that they are seldom out of 

 one's earshot. As day unfolds, the movement dwindles. Now flocks are sev- 

 eral minutes apart; and finally there are none at all except the odd duck or 

 small band moving aimlessly, birds that were disturbed when they met guns 

 or tractors at the field of their choice. This lull lasts only twenty or thirty 

 minutes. Then, before the sun tops the horizon, some are returning to lake 

 or marsh, the silhouettes of their swollen necks giving evidence that they 

 have fed well. These returning wedges usually fly at a greater elevation 

 than on the outflight, and hunters who leave home at daybreak often believe 

 them to be of birds that have spent the night on the fields. 



When skies are clear, stubble flights begin at nearly the same time every 

 dawn, about fifty minutes before sunrise in early October. Bossenmaier 

 (1953a) found that when the sky is overcast, the journey is not so early as 

 on bright mornings, the blanket of cloud delaying the threshold light which 

 is the cue sending the birds off to the fields. As the arrival of dawn is slightly 



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