Iv North-West Canada. <S9 



CHAPTER XIII. 



'UNE 14th.— This being my last day at Rush Lake, 

 as I intended to return in the evening to Moose- 

 jaw, I was out soon after breakfast and ascended 

 ^^^"^^ the hilly prairies south of Rush Lake. My first 

 ^^ find was a nest of the sharp-tailed grouse with eleven 

 h^ eggs. The bird was flushed from a patch of long- 

 grass, and the nest was a hollow in the ground, lined with 

 grass and feathers. The eggs are deep tawny buft", speckled 

 with darker lirovvn. Soon afterwards I found a nest of Mc- 

 Cown's longspur containing three eggs : these eggs were grey- 

 ish white, blotched with dark purplish brown. Saw a turkey 

 buzzard and a pair of marsh harriers : both species evidently 

 had nests close by, but I could not find them. I was disap- 

 pointed at not finding the snowy owl around Rush Lake, as I 

 was informed by Macdonald and others that they were occa- 

 sionally seen, and was shown a fine stufied specimen at the 

 station-house that was shot late in the spring of 1889 ; this 

 bird was a female. Though they are occasionally seen in 

 summer at Rush Lake, they become more plentiful in the fall 

 and winter when the ducks and geese are migrating south. 

 Macdonald, who has spent some years in the North Saskatche- 

 wan, never saw a nest of this l)ird, but he has seen the birds 

 in summer, so that it is probable a few snowy owls do not re- 

 tire to within the arctic circle to breed, but nest further , 

 soutli, on the marshy prairies of Manitoba and Assiniboia, 

 almost reaching the northern border of the United States. It 

 is reported as probably nesting on the Island of Anticosti, in 

 the Gulf of St, Lawrence, as it certainly does in Labrador 

 and Newfoundland. It is also recorded as* a rare summer 

 resident around Lakes Winnipeg and Manitoba. In Great 

 Britain, an instance is recorded of its breeding near Banfi", in 

 Scotland. The nest containing young birds was found by the 



