232 
THE WILSON BULLETIN— December, 1922 
Brown Creepers are even better sleepers than the Downys, and can 
be touched lightly without awakening them. 
One or two cases of the Red headed Woodpecker showed the same 
tendency. The White-breasted Nuthatch is another sound sleeper, but 
the Chickadee outdoes them all, and when they are touched to awaken 
them, they are generally mad and most of them scold. 
Lately we had two Hairy Woodpeckers, and we watched them very 
closely, to see what they would do, but could not catch them, even 
asleep. 
We had a few Flickers, but they were not sound sleepers, and the 
one Yellow-bellied Sapsucker that was trapped, slept through having the 
lights turned on in the room near his cage. 
These observations make us believe that the birds that sleep in 
protected places sleep more soundly than those that perch in the 
more open places. 
HOW FAR DO BIRDS OO WHEN THEY FLY SOUTH? 
The marking of migratory water-fowl, as practiced by the collabor- 
ators of the Biological Survey, United States Department of Agriculture, 
has given evidence that it will be a most interesting and important in- 
vestigation. Although the work has been in progress for only two years, 
notable results have already been secured. 
The ducks and other birds, whose movements are being studied by 
this method, are caught, mainly by the use of special traps, light alumi- 
num bands placed on one leg, and then released. Every band bears a 
serial number and the legend, “ Biol. Surv., Wash., D. C.” In the Wash- 
ington office of the Biological Survey, these banded birds are card in- 
dexed so that when a hunter secures a duck bearing one of these bands 
and reports the data connected with its capture, by referring to the card 
file, the route covered by the bird in question can be easily ascertained. 
When such records are received, the hunter is advised where the bird 
was banded, while the person who attached the hand is informed where 
it was secured. 
During the fall shooting seasons for the last few years, a large num- 
ber of mallards and black ducks, with a few blue-winged teal and other 
species, have been banded at a small lake about twenty miles north of 
Toronto, Ontario, and many interesting returns have been received. 
Long Range Record 
The best “ long range ” record for these Canadian ducks is that of 
a blue-winged teal, banded September 24, 1920, and killed two months 
and seven days later, in the Caroni Swamp, near Port of Spain, on the 
island of Trinidad, just off the coast of Venezuela. The shortest flight 
that this bird could have made would be over 3,000 miles. It is a well- 
known fact that blue-winged teals and certain other ducks that breed in 
North America spend the winter season in South America, but it was 
rather a surprise to learn that those individuals that had bred in Canada 
would make the long flight to South America, because the species also 
winters in small numbers in the Gulf region, and it is to that area that 
the more northern birds might be expected to go. 
The return records of ducks of other species, banded near Toronto, 
