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late August, but most pass south pretty steadily in September and early October, though in southern 
Europe and India few appear before early November, since they linger for some time just north of 
the great wintering area in the two continents, due, perhaps, to the presence of the great central, 
east-to-west mountain chain, which the birds hesitate before crossing, and which acts temporarily as 
a barrier. In America there is no such barrier and Cooke remarks that the last birds leave the Arctic 
about the same time that the first reach the Gulf of Mexico. The last were seen at Point Barrow 
September 7, at Kowak River, Alaska, September 14, at St. Michael’s, Alaska, October 10, at Fort 
Franklin, MacKenzie, September 27. On the other hand, in southern Canada and northern United 
States the first real flight is in early September, and the bulk have left by the middle of October. 
Dr. T. S. Palmer of the U.S. Biological Survey tells me that he has seen flocks of thousands of 
Pintails and Shovellers on the grounds of several clubs, some sixty miles south of Los Angeles, Cali- 
fornia, in late August, and he thinks these were mostly migrating birds. The females and young 
migrate earlier as they do in the case of many other species and go farther south than the adult 
males. This fact has been noted repeatedly by many observers. Autumn stragglers to New England, 
eastern Canada and the Bermuda Isles, are apparently all young of the year. 
The largest set of return records in America comes from a lot of two hundred and twenty-one Pin- 
tails banded by Wetmore at Bear River, Utah, in early autumn. Of these, thirty-five have been 
reported as killed up to March, 1921, or an artificial mortality of at least 15%, as follows: California, 
8 (central region 7, extreme south 1); New Mexico, 1; Texas, northern and southeastern, 2; Mon- 
tana, northeastern, 1; Nebraska, western, 1; Arizona, east-central, 1; Missouri, southwestern, 1; 
Oklahoma, north and south, 2; Saskatchewan, south, 2; Utah, 16. Most of these were taken the 
same autumn and winter in which they were banded. These records bring out a very interesting fact, 
hitherto not suspected, of a broad east-and-west, and even northward dispersal, from a breeding 
center. They prove the complicated nature of migration beyond any doubt. 
A Pintail trapped at Avery Isle, Louisiana, February, 1918, and shipped to Ithaca, New York, was 
released from there March 18, 1918. It was shot at Camrose, Alberta, September 22, 1920. Another 
banded at Avery Isle, Louisiana, February 12, 1917, was shot in the same general region September 
15, 1920, while yet others banded there were shot later in Saskatchewan, Minnesota, North Dakota 
and Wisconsin (U.S. Biological Survey records). 
Of 320 Pintail banded in a duck-decoy on the Danish island of Fano (west coast) in the autumns of 
1908, 1909 and 1910, no less than 67 or 20% were recovered, mostly at a distance, as follows. In 
winter three were recovered in the British Isles, eight in Holland, twelve in France (mostly in the 
northeast and on the west coast), six in Spain (one on the south coast and the rest on the east), eight 
in Italy (mostly Adriatic coast) and two in Austria-Hungary (Adriatic seaboard) as it then was. 
In summer two were taken in southern Sweden, three in Finland (one as far north as north latitude 
68° 27') and nine in Russia. These Russian records range from Kief in the southwest and Novgorod 
in the west to the eastern side of the Urals (59° 51' east longitude) and to the region east of the White 
Sea (farthest 67° 36' north latitude and 52° 30' east longitude). Besides these, sixteen were recovered 
near the place of marking in Denmark (see Mortensen, Dansk. Ornith. Foren. Tidskr., 1914, pp. 113- 
159: also British Birds, vol. 16, p. 271, 1923). 
Reports of Pintails banded at Helgoland and taken at the Friesian Isles, in Holland and Denmark, 
do not show anything of especial interest (Kriiss, 1918). Still other banded Pintails reported by 
Weigold (1912, 1913a) seem to show that birds apparently coming from northern Finland pass 
through Sylt and winter as far north as the Dutch coast, even in severe winters. 
From this it will appear that our study of migration by banding has only just begim, and that it 
is a far more intricate puzzle, geographically, than any one had previously thought. W. S. Brooks 
(1915) during a summer on the Arctic coast of Alaska saw a flock of these ducks flying east at De- 
marcation Point; so that with this as with other ducks, there are distinct west-to-east and east-to- 
west movements on the Arctic coasts. 
