FALL MIGRATION 
Northern Bandings 
We have pointed out some of the factors that may cause dis- 
tortions in the data, and we are impressed by the narrow limits within 
which the banding data may be used in a study of black-duck migration 
throughout its range. With this background we shall proceed with a 
discussion of the recoveries station by station and region by region, 
using the records at their face value but evaluating their relative 
importances where the evidence seems to warrant. 
With maps before us showing the plotted records from all the 
important banding stations across the country, we are impressed by the 
wide scattering of recoveries and the considerable overlap of patterns 
between stations, even with those as widely separated as Munuscong in 
Michigan and Seugog in Ontario or Rochester in New York. At a glance 
one realizes that it would be difficult to separate particular popula- 
tions throughout most of the interior of the range. Only in the extreme 
eastern and western parts are routes of travel from north to south rel- 
atively restricted in width. The flight along coastal New England is 
perhaps the best defined. But even birds of this flight lose their 
identity south of Long Island as they mix with blacks coming out of the 
northwest part of the Atlantie Flyway. Likewise birds coming south 
from Wisconsin seem to follow a relatively narrow corridor, but soon 
become involved with flights originating in the region from Lake 
Michigan to at least southeastern Ontario. This vast interior territory 
supplies birds not only to the Mississippi Valley but to the middle and 
south Atlantic coastal region as well. 
For management purposes a knowledge of the performance of 
unit ponulations is desirable. To arrive at a decision as to what 
might logically be considered separate units of population from the 
standpoint of similarity in migration patterns, it would be well to 
discuss the migration patterns from each banding station and combine 
those that appear similar or closely related. 
Labrador - Quebec 
Beginning with Tinker Harbor, Labrador, the northernmost of 
the eastern Canadian stations, we find a limited number of recoveries 
(56). These few recoveries indicate a rather well defined coastal mi- 
gration with its southern limit as far as Georgia. South of the station 
approximately 29 percent of all the recoveries (direct and indirect) were 
in the Maritime Provinces, 27 percent in coastal New England, (34 percent 
with Long Island) and 41 percent from Long Island south. The direct or 
first-season recoveries reach as far south as Georgia, whereas the in- 
direct recoveries (later seasons) end at Virginia. 
