U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 
Office of the Secretary 
Press Service 
Release - immediate 
May 11, 1923. 
FOLLOWING THE FLIGHT OF BIRDS. 
Sportsmen, ornithologists, and others interested in bird migration and 
the protection of game birds mil find information of value in a new United 
States Department of Agriculture Bulletin, 1145, Migration Records from Wild 
Ducks and Other Birds Banded in the Salt Lake Valley, Utah, by Alexander 
Wetmore, assistant biologist * Bureau of Biological Survey* 
Bands were placed on 1,241 individuals of 23 species of birds, the 
majority on wild ducks of S species* Returns were received from 12 species* 
Of these* 185 birds wfere rertakferi Out of 1,195 banded. 
Many mallards apparently remain in ponds and channels kept open by the 
inflow of spring water after the more extensive bodies of water are closed by 
ice. Such birds pass north in suitable localities as far as the Snake River 
in Idaho* The majority of green-winged teals, cinnamon teals, and spoonbills 
seem to leave Utah to winter in California. Part of the pintails, after leav¬ 
ing Utah, go to California to winter in the interior valleys, while others 
cross to the Great Pladns and go southward to the Gulf Goast in Texas* The 
spring migration carries the latter birds northward through the plains again, 
and eastward as far as western Missouri and north at least into southern Canad 
Details concerning the returns on gadwalls, redheads, white-faced gloss 
ibises, great blue herons, snowy herons, American coots, and a double crested 
07 / 
cormorant are included in the record in tabulated form. As an example of h 
^one of these returns come in may be cited the case of a. Mexican peon a.t 
Mexcaltitan, Territory of Tepic, Mexico, who brought a bit of aluminum to a 
Japanese labor contractor, saying he had found it on the leg of a heron 
that he had killed and eaten. The band was returned to the Biological Survey, 
at Washington, D.C. 
// 
1090-23 
