xviii BIRDS OF AMERICA 



The Audubon Society is trying to guard the Egrets in the South and we know of about 

 twenty thousand of these birds left in the United States. Two of the Society's agents, while 

 on guard, have been shot and killed by plume-hunters, and the colonies have been raided 

 and the plumes sent to New York. 



In North America the great nursery for wild Ducks and Geese is the region between the 

 Great Lakes and Hudson Bay on the east and the Rocky Mountains on the west. There 

 are three great flights of Ducks and Geese in autumn from that section of the country. Those 

 heading for the Atlantic Seaboard chiefly cross the States diagonally, reaching the Atlantic 

 Coast about Maryland. In a reactionary migratory movement, many of them go back along 

 the coast at least to Long Island and swing back and forth, according to weather conditions. 

 The other end of this movement goes down the coast. There is also a great flight down the 

 Mississippi Valley. Under the migratory bird laws, the Mississippi, between Memphis and 

 St. Paul, is a reservation. In the sunken ground of Arkansas there are two large bird-reserves, 

 and on one of these many Ducks find a refuge. This was a famous place for market hunters 

 in days gone by. More than 300,000 Ducks were taken there in one year. Another larger 

 series of bird-reservations is situated in the State of Louisiana. These include 234,000 acres 

 of marsh-land, where numbers of Ducks and Geese now find a safe refuge. These reserva- 

 tions were made by the private purchase of Charles Willis Ward, E. A. Mcllhenny, Mrs. 

 Russell Sage, and the Rockefeller Foundation. 



This widespread interest in birds both on the part of the Government and private indi- 

 viduals has had happy results. Not only are our birds protected, but unusual opportunity 

 has been given to study them. The advance in field work, coupled with the constant 

 improvement of photography, has obtained results little short of astounding. 



When the present work on Birds of America was projected, some months ago, we of 

 the editorial board began as a first move, to take stock of the situation. We felt that the 

 time was at last ripe for a new book on the subject that should be a final repository of all 

 this vast treasure of scattered information. Patient field ornithologists, on the one hand, 

 and laboratory naturalists, on the other, had given us wonderfully rich material which only 

 awaited assembling. The task even ten years ago would have proved far more difficult. 

 What was clearly needed, was to make a thorough canvass of the field and produce a work 

 at once popular and scientific, and at the same time comprehensive — a record of our wild 

 birds prepared in such form as to meet the needs of both the laymen and the trained 

 naturalist. Ornithologists all over the country heartily endorsed the project; indeed we 

 have seldom seen a work which aroused more enthusiasm in the doing than Birds of America. 

 The official check list of the American Ornithologists' Union has been followed for classi- 

 fication, and we have included not only our common living birds as found to-day, but also 

 many rarer forms and some recently extinct, such as the Passenger Pigeon. We have tried, 

 in a word, to present a complete picture and story of our feathered wild bird life. 



