BIOLOGICAL TRADITIONS 



(1831) Alexander Wilson had written that "on the first arrival of these 

 birds in the Susquehanna near Havre de Grace, they are generally lean; 

 but such is the abundance of their favorite food, that toward the beginning 

 of November they are in pretty good order. They are excellent divers, and 

 swim with great speed and agility. They sometimes assemble in such mul- 

 titudes as to cover several acres of the river, and when they rise suddenly, 

 produce a noise resembling thunder. They float about these shoals, diving 

 and tearing up the grass by the roots which is the only part they eat. They 

 are extremely shy, and can rarely be approached unless by strategy." In 

 those days, as now, the Susquehanna was a major wintering place for the 

 Canvasback; then, as now, it gave the best of Canvasback gunning. In 

 Wilson's time the Chesapeake market gunners claimed that their bird was 

 of a finer breed and "boldly asserted that only their waters were favored 

 by this species, and all other ducks, which seemed to claim affinity, were 

 a spurious race, unworthy of consanguinity. Hence at the same time when 

 a pair of legitimate Canvasbacks, proudly exhibited from the mail coach, 

 from Havre de Grace, readily sold for two dollars and fifty cents, a pair 

 of the identical species, as fat, as heavy, as delicious, but which had been 

 unfortunately killed in Delaware, brought only one dollar." * 



The regularity of the Canvasbacks' return to the Susquehanna is but 

 one example of the tie between waterfowl and their wintering grounds. 

 As surely as the arrival of frost, the Greater Snow Geese come each year 

 to Cap Tormente, Quebec, until all their worldly numbers are together 

 there. Every autumn finds thousands of Redheads settling down on the 

 Laguna Madre off the east coast of Mexico. The coming of Greater Scaups 

 to Cayuga Lake in New York is an event of annual interest to upstate 

 waterfowlers. Earlier in the discussions I have dwelt upon the return of 

 ducks to McGinnis Slough, and there is no reason to burden this chapter 

 with further testimony to the fact that ducks, geese, and many other birds 

 come back to the same wintering places year after year, generation after 

 generation. 



What link ties them to their wintering quarters? To be sure, they have 

 selected a habitat that provides suitable food and rest, the kind of en- 

 vironment to which we believe they have some innate attachment. With 

 respect to the geographical location, however, there can be no genetic 

 bond; the Canvasbacks have no inborn guidance to the Susquehanna, nor 



• Mr. Glenn Martin told me that many Maryland wildfowlers still consider the Susquehanna 

 Canvasbacks distinct - heavier and better eating than Canvasback shot elsewhere. 



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