The Marsh Is a Hotel SI 



launch themselves from a liquid instead of a solid base. The 

 dainty hooded mergansers, with heads patterned in black and 

 white, preferred the quietness of the channels. I would find 

 gadwalls in Gadwall Cove. The mallards dabbled and fed in 

 the shallow water along the marsh margins. It was a surpris- 

 ingly precise arrangement: each species following its own 

 desires, each portion of the marsh occupied and used by birds 

 which liked it— a bird for every habitat and a habitat for 

 every species— and usually a quite definite time for each 

 species to make its appearance in the marsh so that I easily 

 could have constructed a map showing the approximate loca- 

 tion of the different birds, and also a table indicating the 

 approximate period for which they would be there. Such a 

 schedule would be subject to changes but probably little 

 more than the unexpected cancellations and changes of 

 plans which would have upset the reservation records of a 

 city room clerk. 



With the approach of winter certain species almost, or 

 completely, disappeared. For example, I noticed that the 

 red-breasted mergansers were fairly numerous in late Octo- 

 ber, but by the first of the year few were left and American 

 mergansers had come in. Scaups arrived late but stayed well 

 into spring. Wood ducks and pintails came early and were 

 seldom seen after the middle of October. The register 

 changed so that almost always when I made a new list I 

 would remove a bird that I had recorded on my last trip and 

 add a new one that had just come in. This made a constant 

 shifting which, though gradual, greatly changed the char- 

 acter of the list every few weeks. 



January and February, the beginning of the calendar year, 

 closed the marsh year. The few birds that came in probably 

 were stragglers, or storm-driven waifs, and not part of the 

 regular marsh movement. On the other hand, the constant 

 shrinkage in numbers was a regular and expected part of 

 the schedule. Since the preceding February the area had 



