Migration and Fate of Transported Juvenile Waterfowl

Abstract

The study of the homing instinct of migratory birds, that mysterious and still unexplained ability which unerringly guides avian travelers, sometimes through darkness, fog, and storm, is intriguing and also is important in practical avian management. The ability and inclination of birds to travel ancestral flyways and to return to the same nesting or wintering ground has long been known and in recent times has been amply demonstrated through records from banded birds (Lincoln, 1935). The regularity of such movements, particularly during spring migrations, has demonstrated time and again that individuals of seemingly aimless flocks may, in fact, be creatures of precision with respect to time, place, or direction. Once established, only a most impelling cause will alter for the individual its use of a migratory route, a nesting area, or a wintering ground. The attachment of birds to their nesting grounds is pronounced, and is common to most if not all species. This is attested by many experiments; some conspicuous examples are the observations by Baldwin and Bowen (1928) on the return of transported house wrens, the researches of Lyon (1935) and of Gillespie (1930) with cowbirds, studies by Kluiver (1935) and Riippell (1936, 1937, 1938) of starlings, martins, and swallows, and of Kratzig and Schuz (1936) with starlings, of Lack and Lockley (1938) with a number of maritime species, and of Watson and Lashley (1915) with sooty and noddy terns. Much of this experimental work involved the transport of adult birds just before or during the nesting season when the homing instinct was most pronounced. Some of these same workers, as well as others, have also transported adult birds from their regular wintering haunts to distant points and observed their return to accustomed habitats or