Trumpeter Swans still raise their families in 

 some regions of the Northwest. 



local breeding experience (like all Passenger Pigeons) are dead and gone. 

 The breeding traditions for this region died with the geese that once nested 

 there. No matter how many fly north along the Mississippi in spring, all 

 modern geese have nesting or family experiences beyond the northern hori- 

 zon; when the time comes, they continue on to their more distant homes. 

 The Giant Canada Goose, which Delacour and Moffitt (Delacour, 1951) 

 considered a distinct subspecies, is forever gone from the Mississippi Val- 

 ley.* 



The Trumpeter Swan tells another story of total regional losses. Roberts 

 (1932:206) gives convincing evidence that this great bird of the prairies 

 bred at Heron Lake, Everson Lake, Swan Lake, and other places in Minne- 

 sota until the 1880s. Bent (1925:293) says that "when the great Central West 

 was wild and uncultivated it was known to breed in the uninhabited parts 

 of many of our central states, even as far south as Missouri." It nested in 

 Iowa as late as 1883. Trumpeters still raise their families in Wyoming, Mon- 

 tana, Alberta, and British Columbia; but their traditions of the Middle West 

 are gone with the pigeons. 



Why have the geese and swans departed from so much of their original 



• Wild breeding flocks of Canada Geese have been re-established in several parts of the 

 Middle West, as mentioned in Chapter 17, but this transplanted stock is not the same as the 

 one that originally bred in the region. 



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