GAME BIRDS AND LARGER NON-GAME BIRDS 145 



to the man with a gun. This was especially the case when 

 they were overtaken by adverse weather. J. H. Fleming 

 has described * a great destruction of swans that took place 

 in March, 1908, at Niagara Falls. One hundred and twenty- 

 eight birds were taken out of a flock that were swept over 

 the falls. On March 14 a flock of three or four hundred 

 swans was seen floating down the river with the current, 

 till danger of being swept into the Canadian rapids caused 

 it to rise and fly to its starting-point. Below Horseshoe 

 Falls the water was breasted by a struggling mass of swans. 

 The majority of them were carried to the ice bridge and 

 either cast up or ground against it by masses of floating 

 ice. The destruction on this occasion was practically total. 



The Trumpeter Swan. — The breeding range of this species 

 extends farther south than that of the whistling swan, and it 

 is found in migration from Manitoba to British Columbia.f 

 Like its near relative, it formerly wintered farther north 

 than is the case to-day. The trumpeter has suffered more 

 than the whistling swan on account of the greater prox- 

 imity of its breeding-range to the regions in which settle- 

 ment has taken place. 



The Migratory Birds Convention provides for a close 

 season for ten years for swans in Canada and the United 

 States, and it is to be hoped that the protection that is thus 

 given to these fine birds in their northern breeding-grounds, 

 in their wintering places in the South, and during their mi- 

 gration will be a means of increasing their numbers. 



GEESE 



The Canada Goose. — What sound is a more welcome 

 herald of spring than the honking of the geese, what sight 

 is more pleasing than the A-shaped flocks of these geese 



* The Auk, pp. 306-308, 1908. 



t In 1920, trumpeter swans were discovered to be wintering in British 

 Columbia and were " filmed." See Bulletin American Game Protective Associa- 

 tion, April, 1921, p. 13. 



