y) Miscellaneous Circular 13, U. S. Dept. of Agriculture. 
were introduced by the more book-learned amateur sportsmen. The result has been 
a lessening of localization of vernacular names, and to some extent an increasing 
looseness in their application. 
The United States probably is as fertile a field for local vernacular names as is to 
be found in the world; not only has there been for a long time a sufficient supply of 
game to attract a veritable army of gunners, but these hunters have been drawn from 
nearly all of the numerous racial elements of our population. Names either derived 
or bodily transferred from all of the principal European languages have become part 
of the vernacular of American hunters, and a number of the names used by various 
tribes of Indians and Eskimos have been adopted. A tendency for immigrants to 
this country to colonize has led to the prevailing use in various localities of languages 
other than English or of dialects derived in part from such languages. This condition 
necessarily influenced the bird names, and evidences are found of this process of 
naming, particularly in the Pennsylvania Dutch communities, in those parts of 
Missouri settled by Germans, and in the extensive Acadian, or French, parishes of 
Louisiana. The French-speaking Province of Quebec is an important Canadian 
example. 
Not only are there geographic and racial reasons for heterogeneity in our local bird 
nomenclature, but our gunners seem to delight in inventing new names for the objects 
of their sport. Fourteen names for the golden plover in one State, namely, Massa- 
chusetts, 16 for the surf scoter in Maine, and 92 distinct names for a single species, 
the ruddy duck, in the United States and Canada, illustrate American prolificness 
in nomenclature. 
SPECIES INCLUDED. 
The birds within the scope of this publication are all of those occurring in the United 
States, Canada, adjacent islands, and Greenland, belonging to families defined as 
migratory game birds by the convention between the United States and Great Britain, 
ordinarily known as the migratory-bird treaty, for the protection of birds migrating 
between the United States and Canada. The migratory game birds included in the 
terms of the treaty are as follows: 
(a) Anatidae, or waterfowl, including brant, wild ducks, geese, and swans. 
(6) Gruidae, or cranes, including little brown, sandhill, and whooping cranes. 
(ec) Rallidae, or rails, including coots, gallinules, and sora and other rails. 
(d) Limicolae, or shorebirds, including avocets, curlews, dowitchers, godwits, knots, oyster- 
catchers, phalaropes, plovers, sandpipers, snipe, stilts, surf-birds, turnstones, willet, woodcock, 
and yellowlegs. 
(e) Columbidae, or pigeons, including doves and wild pigeons. 
In addition to the game birds listed, there is included the bobolink, a migratory 
insectivorous bird, which is also covered by the terms of the treaty and known by a 
variety of names. Because of its depredations on the rice crop of the Southeastern 
States, control measures have been necessary, and the bobolink is now shot under 
permit as a game bird in certain of the middle Atlantic and southern States.” 
TREATMENT OF THE SPECIES. 
The breeding ranges, migration paths, and winter homes of each species are defined 
in this circular in general terms, this information being gleaned chiefly from the 
American Ornithologists’ Union’s Check List of North American Birds (3d ed., 1910). 
Standard English and Latin (scientific) names also head each account, most of them 
being used as they stand at the species number in the Check List referred to. The 
collection of English names which this bulletin is especially designed to present is 
2 For open seasons on game birds not protected by a continuous close season, see the latest edition of the 
game-law bulletin published by the United States Department of Agriculture (Farmers’ Bulletin 1375, 
for the season 1923-24). 
