I've often wondered why we see so many waterfowl of suspicious origin in the fall and winter. Like Wilson Cady, I assume that birds could just as easily escape captivity in the spring and summer.

I don't know anything about keeping waterfowl in captivity, but don't their owners typically cut the primaries to make the bird flighless? If this is the case, then in midsummer and fall these clipped birds would molt and grow new primaries which would allow them to fly again. (At least until they could be caught to have their primaries clipped again.) Maybe this is why we see them in the fall and winter, and not in the spring and summer. This is just a hypothesis, can any one shed any light on it?

Mike Donahue
Seattle