CIRCULAR No. 342 JANUARY 1935 



UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



WASHINGTON, D.C. 



THE WATERFOWL FLYWAYS OF NORTH AMERICA 



By Frederick C. Lincoln, biologist, in Charge, Section of Distribution and 

 Migration of Birds, Division of Wildlife Research, Bureau of Biological 

 Survey 



CONTENTS 

 Page 



Conservation significance of waterfowl fly- 

 ways 



Migration studied by the banding method. 

 Migration routes and fly ways C 

 The four important flyways .. 



The Atlantic flyway 



The Mississippi flyway 



Page 

 The four important flyways— Continued. 



The Central flyway 8 



The Pacific flyway 8 



Diversity of routes complicates administra- 

 tion 9 



Waterfowl populations of the flyways 10 



Summary and conclusions. 



11 



CONSERVATION SIGNIFICANCE OF WATERFOWL FLYWAYS 



There is today indisputable evidence that the waterfowl of North 

 America have alarmingly decreased in numbers. There is also a 

 growing conviction that special precautions must be taken to prevent 

 the extermination of these valuable migratory species. Fortunately 

 science has come to the aid of game-management agencies and points 

 to facts developed by research on the migratory habits and migra- 

 tion routes of the various species through this country, East and 

 TTest. Conservationists now know that the birds have a strong 

 attachment for their ancestral flyways and they recognize the sig- 

 nificance of this fact and its important bearing on the solution of 

 their problems. It indicates that if the birds should be exterminated 

 in any one of the four major flyways now definitely recognized, it 

 would at best be a long time before that region could be repopulated, 

 even though birds of the species affected should continue over other 

 flyways to return to their great breeding grounds of the North. In 

 the light of what has been learned about this attachment of birds for 

 their ancestral flyways it is important that sportsmen throughout 

 the country become acquainted with facts concerning each flyway if 

 they are to aid their State and Federal conservation officials in pre- 

 venting the extermination of the species that use any one of the four 

 major waterfowl migration flyways. 



MIGRATION STUDIED BY THE BANDING METHOD 



From the time of its inception, the Bureau of Biological Survey 

 has had as one of its major projects the study of bird migration. 

 The father of these studies in North America^ Wells W. Cooke, a 

 biologist of the Bureau, had gathered together a great mass of in- 

 formation from contemporary bird students and from existing liter- 

 ature, and by examination of all available migration data was able 



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