BIOLOGICAL TRADITIONS 



ancestors more than half a century ago. In New York State, Emlen (1938) 

 found that in 1932 the locations and boundaries of winter Crow territories 

 were essentially the same as those reported twenty-five, fifty, and, in one 

 case, one hundred and twenty-five years before. Austin (1949) describes 

 Japanese netting places that have been used by wild ducks from time im- 

 memorial. The ponds where the ducks rest are kept as sanctuary, the birds 

 captured in cast nets at passes as they arrive and depart each morning and 

 evening. At one pond, netting privileges are still held by a guild estab- 

 lished more than a hundred years ago. One of the best known traditional 

 ties is that of the Whooping Crane, with the last few coming back from 

 the north each autumn to the Aransas Refuge in Texas. Cushing (1941b) 

 discusses the regular return of Ravens to their roosting place and says that 

 "it is probable that an individual acquires rather than inherits its special 

 attachment for a particular roosting site, even though it probably inherits 

 the ability to form this attachment." Hamerstrom (1942:35) believed that 

 in the continuity of winter territories of the Chickadee "the key lies in 

 tradition. Instead of repeating this random building up from a fresh start, 

 the territory begins its second winter with a nucleus of old-timers." Moffitt 

 (1937) tells of a group of Western Canada Geese that used the same winter- 

 ing quarters in northwestern California for at least fifty years. Stresemann 

 (1934) refers to Palmen's (1874) hypothesis that some birds hold strongly 

 to certain migration routes that are handed from one generation to the next 

 in a traditional manner. 



In some mammals, certain traditions such as the game trail are handed 

 down by record. An Elk need never see another to follow the traditional 

 route that generations of its ancestors have taken out of the high country 

 each autumn. At Delta the White-tailed Deer arrived in the late 1930s. 

 Before this no big game trails had survived from pristine times, and the first 

 deer pioneered their way about the marsh. Now, eighteen or twenty years 

 later, with none of the original stock alive, the modern White-tails follow 

 in the footsteps of their forefathers, and the main deer trails are those estab- 

 lished by the first deer. Some birds leave records for tradition, such as the 

 bulky nest of the Osprey, the chalkings of the Peregrine Falcon, or the mud 

 workings of the Cliff Swallow. Mostly, however, avian traditions are carried 

 in action alone. Such passing of experience by action may be local and brief, 

 like the opening of milk bottles. Or the experience may be long and regional, 

 like the flight of the Whooping Crane to Texas or the Canvasback to the Sus- 

 quehanna. There is no intent upon the part of the elders to "teach" the 



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