VAGRANT MIGRATION
The most striking feature of the migrations of some of the herons is a northward movement after the nesting season. The young of some species commonly wander late in summer and in fall, sometimes traveling several hundred miles north of the district in which they were hatched. The little blue heron (Florida caerulea caerulea) breeds commonly north to South Carolina, and by the last of July the young birds begin to appear along the Potomac, Patuxent, and Susquehanna Rivers, tributary to Chesapeake Bay. Although almost all are immature individuals, as shown by their white plumage, an occasional adult may be noted. With them come snowy herons (Egretta thula thula) and egrets (Casmerodius albus egretta), and on occasion all three species will travel in the East as far north as New England, and in the Mississippi Valley to southeastern Kansas and Illinois. In September most of them disappear, probably returning south by the same route.
The black-crowned night heron (Nycticorax nycticorax hoactli) has similar wandering habits, and young birds banded in a large colony at Barnstable, Mass., have been recaptured the same season north to Maine and Quebec and west to New York. This habit seems to be shared by some of the gulls also, although here the evidence is not so conclusive. Herring gulls (Larus argentatus smithsonianus) banded as chicks at colonies in the Great Lakes have scattered in all directions after the breeding season, some having been recovered well north in Canada.
These movements may be considered as migration governed only by the availability of food, and they are counteracted in fall by a directive migratory impulse that carries back to their normal winter homes in the south such birds as after the mating period have attained more northern latitudes. They are not to be compared with the great invasions of certain birds from the North. Classic examples of the latter in the eastern part of the country are the periodic flights of crossbills. Sometimes these migrations will extend well south into the Carolinian Zone.
Snowy owls are noted for occasional invasions that probably are caused by a shortage of the lemmings and rabbits that constitute their normal food in the North. At least nine notable flights of these birds occurred during the period 1876 to 1927. In the great flight of 1926-27 they were noted as far south as Iowa, Ohio, West Virginia, and North Carolina.
In the Rocky Mountain region great flights of the beautiful Bohemian waxwing (Bombycilla garrula pallidiceps), are occasionally recorded. The greatest invasion in the history of Colorado ornithology occurred in February 1917, at which time the writer estimated that at least 10,000 were within the corporate limits of the city of Denver. The last previous occurrence of the species in large numbers in that section was in 1908.
Evening grosbeaks (Hesperiphona vespertina) likewise are given to performing more or less wandering journeys, and curiously enough, in addition to occasional trips south of their regular range, they travel east and west, sometimes covering long distances. For example, grosbeaks banded at Sault Ste. Marie, Mich., have been recaptured on Cape Cod, Mass., and in the following season have been re trapped at the banding station. Banding records demonstrate that this east-and-west trip across the northeastern part of the country is sometimes made also by purple finches (Carpodacus purpureus).