THE MIGRATION OF NORTH AMERICAN BIRDS 43 
course that is apparently headed for the Mississippi Valley. Many 
do continue this route down the Ohio Valley, but others, upon reach- 
ing the vicinity of Lake St. Clair, between Michigan and Ontario, 
swing abruptly southeast and, crossing the mountains in a single 
flight, reach the Atlantic coast south of New Jersey. This route, 
with its Mississippi Valley branch, has been fully demonstrated by 
the recovery records of ducks banded by a cooperator of the Biological 
Survey at Lake Scugog, Ontario. 
The white-winged scoter (Melanitta deglandi), which also breeds in 
the interior country from northern North Dakota north to the Arctic 
coast, is another bird having an elliptical migration route, so far as 
those wintering on the Atlantic coast are concerned. This duck 
breeds only near fresh water and winters entirely on the ocean along 
both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of the United States. Those 
wintering on the Atlantic side leave their breeding grounds west of 
Hudson Bay and fly 1,500 miles almost due east to the most eastern 
part of Labrador, whence they proceed southward across the Gulf of 
St. Lawrence to their winter home, which extends from southwestern 
Maine to Chesapeake Bay. The spring flight is made by an interior 
route that traverses the valleys of the Connecticut, Hudson, and 
Ottawa Rivers, and thence passes west and north to the breeding 
grounds. 
A study of the Canada geese that winter abundantly in the waters 
of Back Bay, Va., and Currituck Sound, N. C., reveals another impor- 
tant tributary to the Atlantic coast route. Banding has shown that 
the principal breeding grounds of these birds are among the islands 
and on the eastern shores of Hudson Bay (fig. 21). From this region 
they move south in fall to the point of lower Ontario between Lakes 
Erie and Huron. Some of the banded geese are recovered in the 
Mississippi Valley, but the great majority are retaken either on their 
breeding grounds or on the Atlantic coast south of Delaware Bay, 
showing another instance of a long cross-country flight by waterfowl. 
Although Canada geese are abundant in migration on the coast of 
New England, the birds taken there do not include any that were 
banded in southern Ontario. Again, banding has shown that the 
New England visitants come from other breeding areas, chiefly New- 
foundland and the desolate coast of Labrador, and that their migra- 
tion is entirely coastwise. 
Still another cross-country route between the Mississippi Valley 
and the Atlantic coast may be briefly described. While not yet well 
understood, a hitherto unsuspected migration route across the Alle- 
ehenies to the Mississippi Valley has been revealed by the banding of 
blue-winged teal, on the coastal sawgrass marshes of South Carolina. 
Birds marked in these marshes have been retaken in Tennessee and 
Ixentucky as well as in States farther north in the Mississippi Valley. 
Several species of shoal-water ducks, including this dainty little teal 
and the shoveler (Spatula clypeata), are more or less common winter 
residents in the South Carolina marshes, but are less common or 
even decidedly rare in most of the coastal marshes farther north, so 
this cross-country route connecting two main arteries of migration 
seems to be of considerable importance. 
Referring again to figure 20, it is noted that route no. 3 presents a 
much more direct line of flight for the Atlantic coast migrants to 
South America than the others, although it involves much longer 
