TRADITIONS OF WATERFOWL 



the Blue-winged Teal to McGinnis Slough. Our present understanding of 

 innate behavior accounts for no inherited relation between a bird and a 

 special geographic place. I believe that once a Canvasback has come to the 

 Susquehanna, a Redhead to the Laguna Madre, or a Snow Goose to Cap 

 Tormente, these same birds must find their way there again during an- 

 other fall migration. And when juveniles travel southward in company 

 with experienced adults, the Susquehanna, the Laguna Madre, and Cap 

 Tormente are delivered from one generation to the next as traditions. True, 

 some young stray; some do not go directly; some travel without the com- 

 pany of adults. But where such neophytes chance upon birds that have 

 come to use a place regularly, they take this into the realm of their exper- 

 ience. In this way, the link between the Susquehanna River and the 

 Canvasbacks that use it lives in the action of experienced birds, a tradi- 

 tion that ties the wintering behavior of modern birds to their ancestors of 

 Wilson's time and long before. 



In our everyday use of the word, tradition refers to story or verse or 

 rule of family and community that has been handed down from our ances- 

 tors. Essentially, tradition is the delivery from father to son or from an- 

 cestors to posterity of knowledge, experience, and custom, carried through 

 the years without written memorial. Many songs have come to us this 

 way; tales of the frontier have reached us by word of mouth. On sidewalks 

 and in schoolyards we listen to children repeating doggerel that no child 

 ever reads. 



We generally think of traditions as carried vocally, yet it is clear that 

 the verbal link is not essential. For example, some rituals, such as the 

 handshake or the tipped hat, survive in action alone. To be sure, some 

 mothers must prompt their children, but instruction is often absent. Neo- 

 phytes follow the actions of the experienced as when rising for the hymn 

 in church; all do the same thing at the same time with no cues other than 

 the direct movements of companions. Other human traditions are carried 

 by symbol, as the lapel buttonhole and cuff buttons on a man's suit. Without 

 a word, the young accept the customs of the fathers, eventually to see their 

 own progeny following the same traditions, so that no son ever asks for 

 cuff buttons, nor does he order a coat without these ornaments. The paths 

 of our pioneers were followed by others, and the original routes have be- 

 come traditional; many trails of the frontiersman are the roadways of to- 

 day. In cities we follow by walk and curb the traditions of generations 

 gone. Surely our daily lives are ruled far more closely by tradition than 



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