BIED BANDING — LINCOLN 333 



Mo.; Avery Island and the Paul J. Rainey Wild Life Eefuge, La. 

 Waco, Tex. ; Green Bay and the Moon Lake Wild Life Refuge, Wis. 

 Munuskong State Park and the Kellogg Bird Sanctuary, Mich. 

 Rochester and Long Island, N. Y. ; Bar Harbor, Me.; Cape Cod, 

 Mass. ; the coastal marshes of South Carolina ; and the lakes of south- 

 ern Georgia. In Canada important stations have operated at Lac 

 Ste. Anne and Leduc, Alberta; Muscow and Yorkton, Saskatchewan; 

 and Kingsville and Lake Scugog, Ontario. 



Sportsmen and conservation officials are keenly interested in know- 

 in «• the dispersal of the ducks that concentrate at one season or 

 another in these areas. Also, such information is highly practical 

 from the viewpoint of game administration, in indicating the regions 

 that may require special measures for their protection, such as the 

 establishment of refuges. For example, during the time that the 

 act which created the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge in Utah 

 was pending in Congress, some opposition developed from a group 

 of California sportsmen who contended that the number of hunters 

 concerned with this area was too small to justify expenditure of 

 the funds that were contemplated. The records of ducks banded 

 in these great marshes showed conclusively that the big flights of 

 birds to California came through or from this section. When the 

 data were shown on a map and made puplic, opposition quickly sub- 

 sided. Similarly a map showing the dispersal of ducks banded in 

 the Cheyenne Bottoms, Kans. (fig. 2), played an important part 

 in the establishment of a Federal migratory -bird refuge at this point. 



Cnlciilatwg waterfoiol abundance. — A major problem of sports- 

 men, naturalists, and conservation officials is the effect upon the 

 supply of waterfowl of the annual kill by hunters. It is important 

 to know whether the sportsman is merely harvesting the increase 

 or whether he is also cutting into the breeding stock necessary for 

 the perpetuation in adequate numbers of the different species. The 

 many factors involved make the solution of this problem extremely 

 difficult, and it will be apparent that the mere opinion of any single 

 observer or group of observers can be accorded little weight unless 

 it is known that all pertinent data have been taken into considera- 

 tion. Nevertheless, it is believed that the most important factors 

 may be calculated or at least estimated with accuracy sufficient for 

 practical purposes. If this be true, then it appears that data from 

 banded ducks will offer a reliable method for computing the annual 

 fluctuation in the abundance of these birds. The basis of this belief 

 is the constant relation that seems to exist between the number of 

 ducks banded and the number of these killed during the first suc- 

 ceeding hunting season. 



