CONSERVATION OF GAME BIRDS. 549 



of cranberry bogs has resulted in some depletion of breeding 

 Black Ducks, but the reservoirs established for the purpose of 

 flooding these bogs have in part compensated the birds for the 

 loss of their former feeding grounds. On the whole, while all 

 these changes have produced a local decrease of some species, 

 their influence has been very slight compared with that of 

 excessive and unregulated shooting in the same localities and 

 elsewhere. 



Erroneous Opinions Regarding the Causes of the 

 Decrease of Wildfowl and Shore Birds. 



A few correspondents in Massachusetts express the opinion 

 that the wild-fowl and shore birds are still as plentiful as ever, 

 but do not come this way now in their annual flights. 



It is a common expression that the birds have "changed 

 their line of flight." This saying is applied more often to 

 those species which are approaching extinction. This popular 

 opinion is rarely, if ever, founded on fact. It seems to have 

 been formed in the mind of some one as a plausible explanation 

 of the decrease of birds, and then passed from mouth to mouth 

 until it has taken a strong hold of the popular mind. Wilson, 

 Ord, Bonaparte and Turnbull seem to have been responsible 

 for passing this idea down to their posterity. Turnbull, in 

 his Birds of East Pennsylvania and New Jersey (1869, p. 48), 

 voices this opinion in the following words: "Since the eastern 

 provinces have become more densely populated, many of 

 the larger and more wary species of birds have changed their 

 course of migration, and now reach the arctic regions by a 

 route taking them toward the interior of the continent." 

 This statement is, I believe, based on a misapprehension of the 

 facts. Practically all the species which go north by the in- 

 terior route always went that way. A few of the larger species 

 which also went up the Atlantic coast are not found here 

 now, not because they have changed their line of flight, but 

 because most of the eastern individuals have been extermi- 

 nated. The few which remained may have followed their 

 comrades to the west, for when the numbers of a species de- 



