TRAVELS OF WATERFOWL 



map of the marsh and then went directly to a narrows connecting two bays, 

 where he found himself located on one of the best passes in the region. 



At Buckeye Lake, Ohio, Trautman (1940:88) observed that in the diving 

 ducks "the outstanding feature of arriving flocks was their pronounced 

 tendency to approach the lake at or within a fourth of a mile of Sellers Point. 

 During twelve years of observations at least 65 per cent of all arriving flocks 

 came to the lake within a fourth of a mile of that point." In southern Oregon, 

 Robert H. Smith (letter) noted that in local feeding flights out of Klamath 

 Valley "both ducks and geese follow passes across the ridges to other parts of 

 the basin and these passes are favorite shooting spots, particularly if it is 

 windy. It is an odd sensation to hide among the sagebrush and junipers on a 

 mountain pass and watch the birds beat their way up to you." 



Geese and swans, like ducks, cross the lakeshore at the same places year 

 after year. Some of these passes are the same as those used by ducks ; others 

 are at independent crossings which ducks seldom follow. Given the same 

 wind, geese fly day after day along a line of flight from lake to stubble 

 fields, often maintaining this regularity despite a daily barrage of gunfire 

 met along the way. The geese seem more sensitive than ducks to changes 

 in wind direction, however, and the slightest shift in the breeze will often 

 prompt them to select a different flight-line. In a location I have watched for 

 many years, the geese, I am confident, will come over in a southwest wind. 

 In all other winds they cross elsewhere and, after many fruitless dawn ex- 

 periences, I have learned that one may as well stay home as to go there 

 when the wind is wrong. 



Waterfowl are not the only birds that use regular lanes of travel. Rey- 

 naud ( 1899 ) noticed that other kinds follow "air roads invisible to our eyes, 

 but which can be revealed by observation. The bird, like the quadruped, 

 contracts the habit of always returning to the same point by the same route." 

 In autumn the Black-bellied Plovers loaf on the lakeshore sandbars and, like 

 Mallards (but not with them), they make twice-daily trips across the marsh 

 to the prairie, where they feed on fallow fields rather than on stubble. In 

 these feeding travels, plover move along the same flight lines day after day. 

 When the Franklin's Gulls trade back and forth between lake and prairie, 

 their travel shows a regularity similar to that of waterfowl. In the Herring 

 Gull, Tinbergen (1952:5) found that the route of local travel in dune coun- 

 try "changes with changing wind." Black-crowned Night Herons follow 

 established routes to the feeding shallows. A pair of crows I watched one 

 year used the same route daily when traveling between lake ridge and the 



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