December, 1919] 



The Canadian Field-Naturalist 



109 



to fix the position as nearly as may be, it should 

 be noted that the slope of the field becomes a little 

 steeper just here and forms a slight shoulder, and 

 the stream begins a small deviation towards the 

 south. The stream is not nearly large enough to 

 navigate a canoe, and there is nothing to show that 

 it was ever any larger. But its valley leads in an 

 approximately direct line to Muskrat lake, and there 

 is no doubt that Champlain and his party portaged 



along it both for the guidance of the flowing water 

 and because it was their shortest road. 



In the preparation of this article I have to thank 

 Mr. A. F. Hunter, secretary of the Ontario His- 

 torical Society, for bibliographical references and 

 other assistance ; and I am also under obligation 

 to Mr. L. P. Sylvain, of the Library of Parlia- 

 ment, Ottawa, for ready permission to consult the 

 Government's rare Canadiana. 



BIRDS OF NORTHERN SASKATCHEWAN AND NORTHERN MANITOBA 

 COLLECTED IN 1914 BY CAPT. ANGUS BUCHANAN. 



By J. H. Fleming. 



Almost the first knowledge we have of the orn- 

 ithology of the Saskatchewan region is contained 

 in a series of papers published in the Ibis of 1861- 

 62-63, by Capt. Blaikston, who spent the winter of 

 ! 857-58 at Fort Carlton, on the Saskatchewan 

 river, and in 1858 collected at various points in 

 what is now the Province of Saskatchewan. In 

 these papers Capt. Blakiston incorporated much in- 

 formation from Vol. II of the Fauna Boreali- 

 Americana of Richardson- and Swainson, and other 

 published sources. Since then our knowledge of the 

 birds of southern Saskatchewan has been con- 

 stantly enlarged, but strangely enough the ornithol- 

 ogy of the great region drained by the Churchill 

 river and lying to the north of what was till 1912 

 the northern boundary of the province, has had little 

 or no attention paid to it. Notes on its birds were 

 made by James M. Macoiin, who in 1888 travelled 

 fiom Lesser Slave lake east by way of the Atha- 

 basca and Churchill rivers to Lake Winnipeg; these 

 notes were eventually published by John Macoun 

 in his "Catalogue of Canadian Birds." Less than 

 a dozen birds are in the U.S. National Museum 

 collected at Du Brochet lake in 1890, and Pelican 

 Narrows in the Churchill river in 1891 ; probably 

 collected by Henry MacKay, and Joseph Hourston 

 for Roderick MacFarlane; these are the only skins 

 I have seen from this region taken before 1914. 

 During the years 1892-93-94, J. Burr Tyrrell in 

 the course of his explorations of the Barren Grounds 

 more than once traversed the Churchill river, and 

 his official reports^ contain the best description we 

 have of this region; in these reports there are short 

 references to birds. When Edward A. Preble 

 wrote his great report on the Natural History of the 

 Athabasca-Mackenzie region- he included all that 



lAnnual Report, Geological Survey of Canada 

 VIII (new series) Part D, pp. 5D to 120D, Ottawa, 

 1896. Ibid., IX, 1896, Part F (-1897). 



-A Biological Investigation of the Athabasca- 

 Mackenzie Region. North American Fauna No. 27. 

 Bureau of Biological Survey, Washington, 1908. 



was known of the birds of the Churchill river up 

 to 1908. 



When the boundaries of Saskatchewan were, in 

 1912, extended north to include a part of the old 

 Northwest Territory, so little was known by the 

 Provincial Government of the natural history of the 

 northern part of the country that Angus Buchanan 

 determined to investigate the country lying between 

 the Saskatchewan river and the Barren Grounds. 

 He left Prince Albert on May 6. 1914, and des- 

 cended the Beaver river to Lake Ile-a-la-Crosse, and 

 the Churchill river, thence continuing upstream on 

 Reindeer river, and Reindeer lake, entering the 

 Cochrane river on July 18, and Lake Du Brochet 

 on August I . His base camp was made north of this 

 lake, and here he proposed to winter, but hearing 

 of the outbreak of the war in late October, he de- 

 decided to return, reaching Regina on January 15, 

 1915, after an absence of eight and a half months, 

 during which he travelled nearly two thousand 

 miles by canoe and dog-sleigh. The birds col- 

 lected during this expedition were divided, part were 

 deposited in the Provincial Museum at Regina, and 

 the rest handed over to me ; they form a very im- 

 portant addition to our knowledge of the birds of 

 the region drained by the Churchill river, and are 

 in fact the first collection made in northern Sas- 

 katchewan. 



After making a short report' of his trip, to the 

 Provincial Museum at Regina, Mr. Buchanan re- 

 turned to his home in Scotland, enlisted in the 

 Legion of Frontiersmen (25th Royal Fusiliers) as 

 a private, was sent to East Africa, and served 

 throughout that campaign, rising to the rank of 

 captain, and received the Military Cross, and on 

 being invalided home requested me to prepare a list 

 of the birds collected in 1914. I had already ex- 

 amined the birds in the Museum at Regina in 1915 



sReport of the Chief Game Guardian, 1914, pp. 

 33-34, 37-39, Regina, 1915 



