Summary

Description

An occasional year of poor reproductive success is no novelty among Arcticnesting birds. Conservationists have become reconciled to this fact, although they still shudder at the possibility of poor hatches two years in a row among heavilyhunted waterfowl that nest in the Far North. Productivity data we now have for 1961 and 1962 suggest that environmental conditions in the North were generally unfavorable for Arctic geese during these two consecutive breeding seasons. Yet the snows and blues, whitefronted geese, and so far as we know the other Northern nesting geese and swans, did much better in 1962 than in their 1961 nesting. What may have made the difference in 1962 was the relatively large proportion of mature breeders in the nesting populations that season, breeders that were already experienced and able better to cope with unfavorable nesting conditions.