TRADITIONS OF WATERFOWL 



of advantage was added. Despite heavy and ever increasing gun-pressure 

 between refuge and feeding places, the protected rest area attracted more 

 and more geese till, as Hanson and Smith ( 1950 ) pointed out, about 50 per 

 cent of the Mississippi Valley population came to roost on Horseshoe Lake. 



At Jack Miner's and at Horseshoe Lake, formerly gooseless places have 

 become the rendezvous of tens of thousands, the many following the trails 

 of the original few. These famous gathering grounds continue to hold their 

 numbers. Elsewhere are records of broken traditions. Grant's Lake, Mani- 

 toba, was the last stop of the Lesser Snow and Blue Geese before their 

 long journey to James Bay. Here they gathered in such great numbers that 

 Greshem (Soper, 1942) could describe nights where "the leading birds of 

 the flock were dropping into the lake while the tail of the flock was still out 

 of sight." Then suddenly all of this ended: Grant's Lake dwindled and 

 dried; the geese came no more; where the clangor was once deafening, the 

 land was now silent of wavies except in May, when they flew over en route 

 to James Bay. The habit of unrecorded generations came to an abrupt close.* 



The geese of Horseshoe Lake and Grant's Lake seem to offer firm evi- 

 dence that there is no inborn tie of waterfowl to the geographic parts of 

 their continental ranges. Here are the beginnings and the endings of tra- 

 ditions, built recently at Horseshoe Lake, dying over winter at Grant's Lake. 

 Attachments to place live with the birds from generation to generation, 

 growing as the advantages of use remain constant, ending when the places 

 are no longer useful or tolerable. 



Successful explorations and rapid extensions of the breeding range im- 

 ply a constant population pressure. For centuries the force of this internal 

 stress in the Cliff Swallow and the Arkansas Kingbird was met with inhos- 

 pitable breeding conditions ; but within a few years after man altered the 

 face of the land in their favor, some individuals overflowed into new envi- 

 ronments to take occupancy. So rapid were these invasions, sometimes, that 

 human settlers believed the birds had always been there. A careful study 

 reveals pioneerings of many kinds of birds which we now casually accept 

 as part of the native fauna. In regions once forested, the opening of wood- 

 land for agriculture favored the Meadowlark, Bobolink, Vesper Sparrow, 

 and many others that ventured into country which never before had held 

 nesting populations. Where trees and thickets invaded prairies, woodland 

 birds enlarged their ranges in the same way. For southern Wisconsin, Schor- 



There is local disagreement on this point, some contending that the geese abandoned the 

 area in the face of the abundance of aircraft from wartime training centers. 



232 



