May, 1914 119 RESIDENT VERSUS VISITANq? By WILLIAM LEON DAWSON ITHIN ITS own precinct any science has a right to define its own terms, or to discourse in a fashion understood only by its rotaries. But if a science is to become intelligible outside of its own realm, it must'use, so far as it may, the language of common life; it must recognize and defer to values 'already assigned. Zoological science, it seems to me, recently trespassed in its attempted per'kersion of the word visitant, and has obscured rather than clarified the vision of its own field. To be sure there was a real difficulty involved. Human society in its earlier evolution recognized only two relations, that of being at home, resi- dence, or that of being temporarily away, whether to commune with friends, to transact a piece of business, or to satisfy curiosity, visiting. The visitor was always understood to have a home, an abiding place, to which he would be presently returning. But animals,--or, to be specific, let us say birds,- viewed in this aspect are of three sorts: those which remain always in one locality, the land of their birth, residents, in the st. rict sense; those which, hav- ing completed the duties of rearing a family, roam about, whether north or south or east or west, or up or down, visiting various places in turn or casu- ally, being here today or gone tomorrow or next week, visitors in the accom- modated sense in which an animal, not dependent upon friends nor seeking definite goals, may be said to visit. A third class, the class for which we seek definition, both resides and visits, having in fact two homes, or definite habit- ual ranges, and spending more or less time visiting on the way between them. This class has been called, .not inappropriately, summer resident or winter resident, according to the particular local relation under consideration. Of late, however, there has been a great fad for calling this third class sum- mer or winter "visitants", thus confusing them hopelessly with the second class defined above, from which it is of the utmost importance to distinguish them. So defined the Tufted Puffin and the Western Tanager are "summer visitants" of the islands along the coast of Washington. But so also are the /(not and the Wandering Tattler and the Heermann Gull and the California Brown Pelican. Which of these breeds there? The words which might be eloquent if they were chosen with understanding and in conformity with com- mon usage tell you nothing. You require to be told further that the Tufted Puffin breeds there, is, in fact, a summer resident. The Western Tanager also makes its home on these. islands, becomes for the time, and in e;/ery sense susceptible of deftnit)on, a resident in summer. The Knot, while found in summer, is evidently away from home; he is on the way, whether north or south, a visitor, or better, a "migrant in summer". The Heermann Gull,- what shall we say of him ? .Well, there is difficulty here in either case. He is a?vay from home (his breeding place being in Mexico); hence he is not a "summer resident", if that term connotes a breeding bird. But he is a sum- mer resident if you understand by that that he has two homes, one of which is in the North. The California Brown Pelican, however, is strictly a summer visitor, in that he only occasionally appears, and then briefly, along the coast of Washington. We shall have some difficulty, confessedly, in naming this third class; but we are rmt without help or guidance, and that in common current usage.
