Many redheads that breed in the Bear River marshes in Utah, take a westerly route across Nevada to California, but some leave these breeding grounds and fly northeastward across North Dakota and Minnesota to join the flocks of these ducks that come out of the prairie regions of Canada, and travel southeastward to the Atlantic coast. This route can be well traced by the records of ducks banded in summer in the Bear River marshes and retaken the following fall at points in eastern Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Maryland.
Another route from these great marshes crosses the mountains in an easterly direction, but almost immediately turns southward through Colorado and New Mexico, and continues to winter quarters in the Valley of Mexico ([fig. 21] and fig. 20, route 6). This route also represents the travels of many of the land birds of the Rocky Mountain region. Such birds perform comparatively short migrations, most of them being content to stop when they reach the middle districts of Mexico, only a few passing east beyond the southern part of that country.
This account of the Mackenzie Valley-Great Lakes-Mississippi Valley route shows the great importance of this highway and also its complicated nature. It receives accretions from both the northeast and the northwest, while branch routes make wide detours toward the Pacific coast before turning back to the parent fly way. This flyway is notable for its great length, as it extends from the Arctic-coast to Patagonia; and for its width east and west, as in North America it reaches from the Allegheny Mountains westward to the Great Basin.
PACIFIC COAST ROUTE
Although it does present features of unusual interest, the Pacific-coast route is not of so great importance as some of the others described. Because of the equable conditions that prevail, many species of birds along the coast from the Northwestern States to Southern Alaska either do not migrate at all or else make relatively short journeys. This route has its origin chiefly in Alaska, the general region of the delta of the Yukon River marking its northern terminus, although a few species join it after a flight westward along the Alaskan Arctic coast ([fig. 21]). Some of the scoters (Melanitta and Oidemia) and other sea ducks of the north Pacific region, and the diminutive cackling goose (Branta canadensis minima), which breeds in the delta of the Yukon River, use the coastal sea route for all or most of their southward flight. The journey of the cackling geese, as shown by return records from birds banded at Hooper Bay, Alaska, has been traced southward across the Alaska Peninsula and apparently across the Gulf of Alaska to the Queen Charlotte Islands, the birds following the coast line south to near the mouth of the Columbia River. There the route swings toward the interior for a short distance before continuing south by way of the Willamette River Valley. The winter quarters of the cackling geese are chiefly in the vicinity of Tule Lake, on the Oregon-California line, and in the Sacramento Valley of California, though a few push on to the San Joaquin Valley.
B4509M
Figure 24.—Probable breeding range, the winter range, and the migration route of Ross's goose. This is the only species of which all members apparently breed in the Arctic regions, migrate south through the Mackenzie Valley, and upon reaching the United States turn to the southwest rather than the southeast. The southern part of this route, however, is followed by some mallards, pintails, baldpates, and possibly by other ducks.
A tributary of this flyway is followed by Ross's goose (Chen rossi), which is believed to breed on the Arctic islands north of Mackenzie ([fig. 24]). Its fall migration is across the barren grounds to Great Slave and Athabaska Lakes, where it joins thousands of other waterfowl bound for their winter homes along the eastern coast of the United States and the Gulf of Mexico. But when Ross's geese have traveled south approximately to the northern boundary of Montana, they separate from their companions, and turning to the southwest cross the Rocky Mountains and settle for the winter in California.
The route taken by the white-winged scoters that winter on the Atlantic coast already has been indicated ([p. 43]). Some birds of this species, however, winter on the Pacific coast from Puget Sound south to southern California. Their passage by thousands up and down the coast has been noted as far north as northwestern British Columbia. The species is known to nest in Alaska, which may be the home of some at least of the scoters that winter on the Pacific coast. If such be the case, however, it must be admitted that a part of the route taken by the birds when on migration is unknown, though very few observations are available from the interior of northern British Columbia, across which the route may lie.