TRADITIONS OF WATERFOWL 



enced birds carried new traditions from one generation to the next. Many 

 hundreds of years elapsed in the recession of glacial Lake Agassiz before 

 the Upland Plover arrived on the prairie border of modern Lake Manitoba, 

 and yet these plovers have traditional rather than genetic ties to this land 

 in the same way as the Arkansas Kingbirds which arrived on the neighbor- 

 ing farmsteads only a few years ago. 



Salomonsen (1951), among others, has presented evidence of the re- 

 sponse to changes of climate taking place in our time. "Recent climatic 

 change in the arctic and temperate zones of the Northern Hemisphere," he 

 says, "has caused an amelioration of the conditions of life of many animals 

 and plants. It is a well-known fact that the breeding-area of a number of 

 birds belonging to the Mediterranean, European or the Siberian Taigoa 

 fauna has been pushed to the north in the last decades." He describes in 

 detail the immigration of the Fieldfare to Greenland; and Gudmundsson 

 ( 1951 ) discusses the relation between climatic changes in Iceland and the 

 arrival of pioneers establishing new breeding ranges there. It is interesting 

 that the pioneers to Iceland and Greenland have come from Europe rather 

 than from North America; and, indeed, Salomonsen (1951:519) shows 

 how the movement of the Fieldfare to Greenland was related to the favor- 

 able flow of winds blowing from Europe around the "top" of the Greenland 

 low-pressure area. ° 



Students of tradition will study the transplantings of game species to 

 learn something of the artificial establishment of pioneers. Leopold (1933: 

 87) points out that "transplantation of game is as old as civilization," and 

 with some kinds, such as the Pheasant in Great Britain, the originally 

 exotic species has become established as a part of the native fauna, with 

 a local history running back centuries. By and large, artificial introductions 

 have been most successful with nonmigratory species, but Delacour (1954: 

 161 ) tells us that the Canada Goose was introduced into Europe from North 

 America in the seventeenth century. "It soon became well established and 

 hundreds are still living in a feral state in Great Britain today." Although 

 not of themselves inclined to pioneer new breeding colonies, geese respond 

 well to artificial transplantings. In North America there have been many 

 successful "seedings" of Canada Geese, breeding colonies having been es- 

 tablished on new ranges or in areas where the original populations were 

 killed when the country was settled. New colonies of geese may be started 



For other discussions of pioneerings see Cowan ( 1937), Fisher ( 1951 ), Keve and Udvardy 

 (1951), Salomonsen (1948), Svardson and Durango (1951), and Valikangas (1951). 



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