CONSERVATION OF BIRDS AND MAMMALS 143 



port and assistance, and I cannot conceive anything now that will 

 prove an obstacle to the conclusion of an International Treaty between 

 the United States and Canada to provide for the protection of 

 migratory birds. 



It might be well if I referred briefly to the provisions 

 United ^States ^f United States regulations for the protection of 



migratory birds under their Federal Act. In order to 

 carry out their regulations, they have divided the co-untry into a breed- 

 ing zone and a wintering zone; and all regulations in regard to open 

 seasons are framed in accordance with these two zones. Their regu- 

 lations also take into account the migratory routes along the Missouri, 

 the Mississippi and the Ohio rivers, along which the protection of 

 birds travelling to their nesting places has been declared ; no shooting 

 of birds along these routes is allowed between January 1 and October 

 31. The object of the regulations, of course, is to reduce the open 

 seasons, which have been very diverse in different states, to within 

 reasonable limits, to give the sportsmen their opportunities at the best 

 season of the year, but to give the birds the benefit of any doubt, and I 

 think the regulations succeed pretty well. The legislation is designed 

 to prohibit the . shooting of migratory birds in spring and between 

 sunset and sunrise, to make the seasons approximately equal in length 

 in different parts of the country and to limit the seasons during which 

 the birds may be shot to a maximum of from two months to three 

 and a half months. The various classes of birds are defined and the 

 regulations are framed according to these classes and according to the 

 season. A close season for five years has been declared on certain 

 migratory game birds, particularly shore birds. All this, of course, 

 refers chiefly to the game birds. In regard to insectivorous birds, the 

 protection of which is ensured absolutely — that is, they are not allowed 

 to be shot at any time — they include the following : bobolinks, catbirdp, 

 chickadees, cuckoos, flycatchers, grosbeaks, humming-birds, kinglets, 

 martins, meadow larks, night-hawks or bull-bats, nuthatches, orioles, 

 robins, shrikes, swallows, swifts, tanagers, titmice, thrushes, vireos, 

 warblers, waxwings, whippoorwills, wood-peckers, wrens, and all other 

 perching birds which feed entirely or chiefly on insects. Of course, 

 it is tb be expected that, when this Treaty is concluded, Dominion 

 regulations along similar lines will be required. These will be very 

 valuable because they will strengthen the hands of the provinces, all 

 of which have regulations of some kind or other dealing with the 

 protection of birds, but all of which do not appear to enforce those 

 regulations to the fullest possible extent. 



