!■ 
1 
est migration route, traveling 
9,000 miles from its winter home 
in Patagonia to its breeding 
grounds on the bit of land nearest 
the North Pole. While this is, of 
course, * an exceptional instance, 
there are practically no species 
that migrate less than a distance 
of a thousand miles, and a great 
many more traverse from two to 
six thousand miles. 
It is an interesting but notori¬ 
ous fact that few species of shore 
birds follow the same migration 
route in the spring that they do 
in the fall. The two principal 
routes are by way of the Missis¬ 
sippi River valley and along the 
Atlantic seaboard. The former 
route, for example, is followed by 
the lesser yellow-legs and the 
golden plover on their northward 
journey, and the latter route on 
their return trip to the winter 
home. The reason for this alter¬ 
nation in migration routes is diffi- 
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Note c<xr&fulkj The species before joushoor.*These little 
fellows are bur one vaurioKj of a greaf ^roup of 
shore birds protected INTERNATIONAL LAW. 
cult to determine in certain instances, 
but as a rule feeding conditions can be 
decisively determined as the controlling 
factor. Those that follow the Missis¬ 
sippi Valley in the spring feed on the 
surface grubs and worms and the 
various insects found in the fields and 
on the prairies of that region, while 
those following our Atlantic seaboard 
regale themselves on the numerous 
forms of small-marine life, such as 
crustaceans, mollusks and marine 
worms. The comparatively recent 
cultivation of the Mississippi Valley 
prairies has been a factor in causing 
some species to abandon this route and 
to turn to the vicinity of the Atlantic 
seaboard. 
The problem of the protection of our 
shore birds has proven a very difficult 
and more or less discouraging affair, 
and is deservant of the earliest atten¬ 
tion of all sportsmen worthy of the 
name the country over as well as 
of the professional conservationists. 
These difficulties arise from several 
well-defined causes, the sum total of 
which produce a complicated condition 
of affairs. The extremely wide-rang¬ 
ing propensities of these birds in many 
cases carries them out of 
the jurisdiction of the 
United States. This con- 
American countries visited during the 
winter. Then again, both the breed¬ 
ing grounds and the winter ranges of 
these birds have been greatly restricted 
within recent years due to the rapid 
inroads of civilization and of agricul¬ 
tural developments. Shore birds also 
lay fewer eggs than any other species 
of game birds, two or three being 
about an average in most cases. When 
this fact is taken into consideration, 
together with the frequency with which 
the eggs and young are preyed upon 
by crows and various species of gulls 
and the smaller land animals, it is 
estimated that the average female 
shore bird does not rear more than 
two young in a season. Unfortunately, 
the extremely short summer season in 
the barren grounds of the Arctic Circle 
does not permit of an opportunity to 
hatch a second brood as do many of 
our insectivorous birds. It also hap¬ 
pens occasionally that those species 
which breed farthest north find the 
nesting sites covered with ice and 
snow, and as a consequence turn south 
dition can, of 
course, be con¬ 
trolled only by 
a wise inter¬ 
national policy 
the solution of 
which would 
be further 
complicated by 
the great va¬ 
riety of South 
again before the end of June or early 
in July. This fact is evidenced by the 
scattered early arrivals in the vicinity 
of New England and the Middle Atlan¬ 
tic States—sometimes as early as the 
middle of July. Shore birds as a rule 
also decoy very easily and show little 
of the sagacity of grouse and quail in 
eluding an ever-increasing band of 
gunners. 
All of the above factors tend to pre¬ 
vent our shore birds from increasing 
in a normal ratio even with the enact¬ 
ment of stringent game laws, although 
much can be accomplished in this direc¬ 
tion by the wise and rigid enforcement 
of such laws, and our Federal govern¬ 
ment has proven itself extremely wise 
and most gratifyingly foresighted in 
creating a closed season on all species 
of the true shore birds with the excep¬ 
tion of the greater and lesser yellow- 
legs, golden plover and black-breasted 
plover. 
The United States Department of 
Agriculture, through the efforts of the 
Biological Survey as well as numerous 
state departments of agriculture, have 
conclusively shown that the majority 
of species of shore birds are very valu¬ 
able to our agricultural 
interests from an eco¬ 
nomic standpoint in that 
they annually 
