BIRD 



742 



BIRD 



ing without family cares, and the trip may be 

 made easily. The males don their brilliant 

 courting dress, and their arrival at any given 

 place is a conspicuous event. In the fall, 

 however, the birds move more slowly. They 

 have worked hard during the summer feeding 

 their young, for this is a tremendous task, and 

 have as yet scarcely recovered from their 

 molting season, and there are, besides, the 

 little birds which have not yet tried their 

 wings in any very long flight. Stop-overs are 

 frequent, and sometimes the whole flock tar- 

 ries in a rich feeding ground for weeks, gath- 

 ering strength for continuation of the long 

 journey. The bobolink, for instance, stays for 

 a time in the Carolina rice fields. 



Migration Routes. Some of the birds make 

 what would be a very long journey even for 

 larger travelers. The golden plover, one of 

 the most ambitious birds, breeds far north on 

 the shores of the Arctic Ocean, and with the 

 approach of fall moves into Nova Scotia and 

 from there lays a direct course southward to 

 the north coast of South America, flying for 



hundreds of miles across the open Atlantic, 

 far out of sight of the shore (see diagram 

 herewith). The yellowlegs are the world's 

 most famous travelers, for they summer as far 

 north as the Arctic Circle and take an 8,000- 

 mile flight to Central Argentina every autumn, 

 returning in the spring. Sixteen thousand 

 miles a year on a serious adventure, borne 

 onward by one slender pair of wings! Other 

 birds there are, too, which cross great 

 stretches of trackless water, and the mind of 

 man cannot even conjecture what guides 

 them. Observation has been extensive enough 

 to show that there are a number of well- 

 marked migration routes along which most of 

 the birds travel in America no fewer than 

 seven "trunk lines." In part these are deter- 

 mined by the land surface features, and in part 

 by the presence along the way of food sup- 

 plies, but nothing has as yet been discovered 

 which will account in the least for the route 

 of the "ocean-going" birds. The valleys of the 

 great rivers running from north to south are 

 favorite highways of the migrating birds. J.B. 



Government Protection of Birds 



Bird Reservations. Tracts of land or water 

 islands and marshy places along rivers and 

 shores, wild stretches in mountainous districts 

 and lakes which are set apart by national, 

 state or provincial governments as permanent 

 and safe retreats for the native wild birds, are 

 known as bird reservations. There they rest 

 in peace and security from the hunter the 

 year round. Without such abiding places 

 many species of birds would before many 

 years become extinct. The first United States 

 reservation was established by President 

 Roosevelt in March, 1903, when, by special 

 proclamation, he set aside Pelican Island, in 

 Indian River, Fla., as a home for the pelicans 

 that nested there. In 1909, when he retired 

 from office, he had established fifty-three 

 different bird reservations. This great work 

 was continued by his successors; four new 

 national reserves were created in 1913, and 

 two in 1915. 



These places of refuge 'are located in all 

 parts of the national domain, from Porto Rico 

 on the south and east to the chain of Aleutian 

 Islands off the coast of Alaska; along the 

 Gulf, and Atlantic states, midland in Nebraska 

 and South Dakota, and westward in Oregon 

 and California; while in the Pacific is the 

 great Hawaiian Island Reservation. The two 



reservations in Oregon and California, includ- 

 ing Lower Klamath Lake, Malheur and Har- 

 ney lakes and the great marshy stretches 

 around them, are the largest wild-fowl nur- 

 series on the Pacific coast. 



In bird reservations the feathered creatures 

 seem instinctively to know they are safe from 

 the gun of the huntsman; admission to one of 

 these sanctuaries is only through the kindness 

 of officials in charge, and indeed on some 

 reservations human beings are not allowed 

 under any circumstances. 



In 1916 a treaty was ratified by the United 

 States and Canada providing that no bird 

 which helps the farmer by destroying insects 

 shall be shot at any time, and that the open 

 season for game laws may be restricted to 

 three months and a half. 



Game Laws. The wanton and careless de- 

 struction of wild birds by sportsmen and 

 plumage-hunters, which in the past has caused 

 the birds to diminish at a deplorable rate, 

 has awakened the people of both the United 

 States and Canada to the need of protective 

 legislation. The loss to farmers from preying 

 insects would be much greater than it is but 

 for the birds, and it would be a calamity not 

 to preserve for mankind the many beautiful 

 and sweet-singing creatures of the woodland 



