Life on the western marshes

Each spring North America’s wild ducks and geese leave for their northern breeding ranges. Most of them land in the Canadian northwest, where, by June, the marshes shelter thousands of broods. Despite their rapid growth, only three out of every ten ducklings survive to learn to fly. Attacked by animal and bird predators, poisoned in scores by bacteria in low waters, threatened on the ground by magpies, ground squirrels, and gophers, and from the air by crows, yet the greatest danget to ducklings in man’s misuse of natural resources, for while times the watersheds flood the breading areas, at other times the level of water is allowed to sink dangerously low. ‘Ducks Unlimited’, an organisation formed by both sportsmen and farmers, helped by the on-the-spot community co-operation, is carrying out measures to preserve wildfowl from the various threats to their existence.