SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS 
l. The report concerns the fall movements, or migrations, 
of the black duck throughout its range as revealed by banding records. 
A total of 15,481 recoveries, made during the hunting seagon and on 
file at the Patuxent Research Refuge, have been analyzed. These 
records of recovery were obtained between 1918, when banding first 
Started, and January 31, 1951. 
2. The Atlantic Flyway receives its black ducks from the 
vast territory bounded on the east by Labrador and Newfoundland and 
on the west by Ontario and Wisconsin. The Mississippi Flyway draws 
its birds from Ontario and western Quebec, the northern states within 
its flyway boundaries, plus western Pennsylvania, and New York. As a 
result we find some black ducks from northeastern states traveling 
southwest into the Mississippi Valley and some blacks from the states 
of the north central region and Ontario moving southeast to the 
Atlantic States. 
| The interehange between flyways is probably of little im- 
portance in management since the majority of the birds banded ina 
flyway are taken in the same flyway. The region not conforming 
entirely in this respeet includes the South Atlantic states from 
South Carolina to Florida. Bandings from this region seem to show 
nearly as strong an affiliation with the Mississippi Flyway as with 
the Atlantic Flyway. 
Flights out of eastern Canada and eastern New England travel 
in a southerly or southwesterly direction. Reeoveries are confined 
largely to coastal areas. Important numbers go as far south as North 
Carolina. Those birds banded in northern Vermont and eastern New York 
continue southward to the coastal areas of the Middle Atlantic states 
and a number of reconis come from the Delaware and Chesapeake Bay 
marshes. From western New York and Ontario, the southward pattern of 
dispersal takes on the aspect of a rapidly expanding cone. The birds 
go into the Mississippi Valley as well as into the Middle and South 
Atlantic states. Further westward in Ohio and beyond, the axis of 
migration is south and southwest with the Middle Atlantic states 
rapidly decreasing in importance. 
3. At many points in the northern states from ccastal Mass- 
achusetts to Wisconsin, as well as in parts of maritime Canada, banding 
records indicate the existenee of some populations with more or less 
sedentary habits. Lack of movement or possibly delayed migration seems 
to vary somewhat between areas but generally 60 to 80 percent of the 
direct or first-season recoveries are taken within a 50-mile radius of 
the banding station, and frequently a large part of the remainder are 
taken not mueh farther south. This is in striking contrast to the 
bandings farther north. These northern bandings indicate a strong 
movement through or over these intermediate areas, and a penetration 
far to the south. 
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