Migration of Birds (1950)Lincoln, Frederick Charles
Science
Migration of Birds (1950)
Lincoln, Frederick Charles
Birds; Birds -- Migration
Harris's sparrow supplies an interesting example of a narrow
migration route in the interior of the country (fig. 9.) This fine,
large finch is known to breed only in the region from Churchill, on
the west shore of Hudson Bay, northwest to the shores of Great Bear
Lake. Very few actual breeding records of the species are available,
but these are sufficient to indicate that the breeding range is in
the strip of country characterized by more or less stunted timber
just south of the limit of trees. When it begins its fall migration,
this species necessarily covers the full width of its breeding area.
Then it proceeds almost directly south, or slightly southeasterly,
the area covered by the majority of the birds becoming gradually
constricted, so that by the time it reaches the United States it is
most numerous in a belt about 500 miles wide, extending across North
Dakota to central Minnesota. Harris's sparrows are noted on migration
with fair regularity east to the western shore of Lake Michigan, and
west to the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, but the great bulk of
the species moves north and south through a relatively narrow path in
the central part of the continent. Present knowledge suggests that
the reason for this narrow migration range is the close association
that Harris's sparrow maintains with a certain type of habitat'
including brushy places, thickets, edges of groves, and weed patches.
While these environmental conditions are found in other parts of
the country, the region crossed by this sparrow presents almost a
continuous succession of habitat of this type. Its winter range
extends from southeastern Nebraska and northwestern Missouri, across
eastern Kansas and Oklahoma and through a narrow section of central
Texas, at places hardly more than 150 miles wide.
The scarlet tanager presents another extreme case of narrowness of
migration route (fig. 10), its breeding range extending in greatest
width from New Brunswick to Saskatchewan, a distance of about 1,900
miles. As the birds move southward in fall their path of migration
becomes more and more constricted, until at the time they leave the
United States all are included in the 600-mile belt from eastern
Texas to the Florida peninsula. Continuing to converge through
Honduras and Costa Rica, the boundaries there are not more than 100
miles apart. The species winters in northwestern South America, where
it spreads out over most of Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru.
The rose-breasted grosbeak also leaves the United States through
the 600-mile stretch from eastern Texas to Apalachicola Bay, but
thereafter the lines do not further converge, as this grosbeak enters
the northern part of its winter quarters in Central America and South
America through a door of about the same width (fig. 11).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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