MIGRATIONS OF WATERFOWL 



passed for half an hour, a vast aggregation that surely must have traveled 

 so through the night from some distant starting place in Canada. 



By the voices overhead, the contact calls of passerines, I have marked 

 the migrations of small birds over Delta on spring evenings when there was 

 no moon and the dark overcast obscured all sunglow in the northwest. I 

 believe such birds turn west, judging by the drift of their voices, and, like 

 the daytime travelers, they must be visually aware of the lakeshore to make 

 this shift. On the evening of April 30, 1951, the moon (but not its glow) 

 was hidden by an overcast that produced a fine drizzle of rain. It seemed a 

 poor night for passage, yet not long after twilight had failed, there devel- 

 oped a heavy Coot migration, made evident by the flight calls of the trav- 

 elers. I climbed to the observation platform of the Kirchoffer Lodge, where 

 my eyes, at twenty-five feet, probably were about one-quarter as high as 

 those of the migrating Coots. From that vantage point, despite the overcast 

 and the rain, I could see the road four hundred yards away, and such de- 

 tails as individual trees and buildings were visible more than half a mile 

 beyond. The south edge of Cadham Bay, two miles distant, was clearly 

 outlined, and I could see bluffs of trees and the horizon. Many of these Coots 

 apparently were arriving at Delta from the south; when they reached the 

 lakeshore they were heard turning back, then alighting on the marsh. 



One October evening, about two hours after dark and in the midst of 

 a driving snowstorm, I heard a flock of small birds, by their voices Snow 

 Buntings, fly past apparently a few yards above the trees. I cannot believe 

 this could have been an oriented flight. Another night, jet with overcast and 

 lack of moon, I was brought out of doors by the yelp of Richardson's Geese 

 flying very low. Soon their voices told me that they had alighted on the 

 lake not far from the lights of the village store. The Snow Buntings in the 

 snowstorm, the geese in pitch darkness, represent movements such as are 

 all too often considered to be oriented travel ; yet the "note" sections of the 

 ornithological journals in almost every issue carry reports of "accidentals," 

 misplaced birds that have turned up far from their regular beats to delight 

 the bird-watcher and send him quickly to print with his discovery. "Hold- 

 ups, side-slips into cul-de-sac, losses of contact will happen. The birds that 

 settle on the rigging of a ship miles out at sea ; fog-bound stragglers around 

 a light-house; storm-driven seabirds inland; exhausted migrants dropping 

 in — all these are evidence of this. These are the unfortunates, the lost, the 

 grim reminders of the perils and the cost . . ." (Ennion, 1943:63). 



Whereas we note such regularities in waterfowl migration as the mid- 

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