INTRODUCTION. 



sea-fowl joined in the flight, part of which turned to the open 

 waters of the Atlantic on the east and part to the Pacific on 

 the west, but the greater part kept on, crossing the continent 

 to the south. As this concourse moved on, the great islands 

 of the North Georgia Archipelago gave up their quota of Snow 

 Geese and other water-fowl; and as the widening, deepening 

 wave rolled southward, it was swelled by countless Loons, 

 Cranes, Swans and Plover from the great and lonely lands 

 lying in the Arctic Ocean, between the Georgia Islands and 

 the coast of the continent. Banks Land, Behring Land, 

 Prince of Wales Land, King William Land, North Somer- 

 set Land, Cockburn Land and Baffin Land gave forth their 

 thousands and tens of thousands; and when at last the aerial 

 hosts reached the southern shores of the Arctic Sea, the}" were 

 joined by the vast swarms of Geese and Swans that bred 

 there upon the wide-spreading tundra. From the mouth of 

 the Yukon to the shores of Ungava, Geese, Eider Ducks and 

 many other water-fowl and myriads of shore birds joined the 

 advancing tide of bird life. The wave of migration secured 

 tremendous accessions from the Barren Grounds; but it was 

 the timbered region, the great plains of the northwest and 

 the river valleys of British America and Alaska that furnished 

 the greatest flights of Swans, Cranes, Canada Geese, Ducks 

 and Teal. Moving by easy stages through August and early 

 September, the vanguard of the host reached the boundaries 

 of what we now know as the United States. Great flights of 

 Wood Ducks, Snipe, Curlews, Plover and Teal were in the 

 advance. We have no adequate early records of the move- 

 ments of these mighty hosts. A paragraph here and there 

 from the narratives of early explorers is all that can be 

 found, but even as late as the middle of the nineteenth 

 century the flights were still immense. Had De Soto and 

 the adventurers of his company kept and published an 

 account of the flights of birds that they witnessed, they 

 might have told of the impressions left by their first sight of 

 this great congregation of migratory fowl. The advance of 

 autumn and the sharp touch of the frost king in the north 

 had sealed the waters of the upper half of the continent, — a 

 seal that would remain unbroken until the return of spring. 



