pintail® linger through the winter south of the line of ice and with the 
coming of open water in the earliest of spring thaws crowd eagerly northward 
during favorable weather perhaps to be driven southward again in a few days 
by a sudden spell of freezing weather that closes the streams and ponds. Their 
number is increased in late January by birds coming from winter homes farther 
south. Beports from Oklahoma and eastern lew Mexico at the end of January 
and from the panhandle of Texas near the end of February are supposad to 
represent such restless early migrants. /? One of these a bird captured on the 
salt plains of the Salt Fork of the Arkansas River in Oklahoma had a history 
of uououal lnmo .,.3 
ember, 1914 while crossing the flats of South Bay In a mud-boat. 
a flat-bottomed launch with an automobile engine as motive power to drive 
steel-bladed paddle wheels on either aide, desired to run over smooth clay 
mad barely covered with water, 1 noted a pintail helpless with the duck sick¬ 
ness in the mud at oaeeside, A motion to the steersman of our or aft was suf- 
... • ' ", .» '.ri 
fioient to ohange our course slightly and as we dashed past in a spray of mud 
and water, a veritable charging juggernaut, 1 leaned out and seized the duck and 
draw it in. A peculiar orescent of white feathers marked this individual duck 
from others so that it was easily recognized. After a week or two in captivity 
the bird now fairly tame was banded and released on September 23. Until 1 left 
Duokville a month later it lingered about the duck pens returning night and 
morning to be fed, though the shooting season was open. About February 1, 1915 
this bird was captured alive in Oklahoma and on March 6 of the same year was 
cJM$ 
still in captivity. 
A v 
The most eastern report of any of these banded ducks was that of a 
pintail shot on January 26, near As bury in western Missouri, presumably another 
migrant in northward flight. Two records for southern Saskatohewan, one in 
