VoI 'i9i9 XVI ] Taverner, Birds of Red Deer River, Alia. 3 



can reach, shaped by the elements into strange forms, gashed into 

 gullies with sharp knife-edged buttresses between, or carved into 

 domes and sugar loaf shapes. Between Camps 9 and 10 this 

 sculpturing becomes more pronounced and stranger still. The 

 domes are more conical, their sides steeper, vertical cliffs and sink- 

 holes are more common and the sky line more ragged. Gothic 

 cathedral outlines replace Byzantine domes and the landscape 

 exhibits a confusion of buttressed spires and balanced rock-capped 

 pinnacles. 



The country about Red Deer is rolling prairie of varied and 

 interesting aspect with considerable spruce bush covering the hills 

 and following watercourses. On the river, as far as Nevis, spruce 

 of considerable size is a conspicuous element in the vegetation, 

 ascending the hills on either hand wherever root hold can be ob- 

 tained, while the stream margin is well clothed with poplar, birch 

 and willow. Below Nevis the spruce gets less common and smaller, 

 and within a few miles further down exists only as small scrub 

 covering the higher and colder slopes. Below Drumheller it ceases 

 to exist at all. As the spruce gives out the Cottonwood along the 

 banks takes on a larger and stronger growth. Wherever the swing 

 of the river has built up an alluvial plain the margins are well 

 wooded for a hundred yards or so back from the water. Most of 

 this is Cottonwood and large trees with great rough trunks and 

 spreading branches like grove-grown oaks occur commonly. The 

 smaller shrubbery is largely saskatoon or willow and alder. This 

 character of vegetation persists, except on the eroded banks, to 

 near Steveville, Camp 10, below which the timber becomes smaller 

 and scantier, and at our final Camp 11, even tent poles were difficult 

 to find and sage brush and prickly pear cactus generally came down 

 to the river banks. 



The ecological conditions follow the physiographical aspects. 

 About Red Deer and nearly to Nevis the river valley is meso- 

 phytic, while below drier conditions prevail, until at our last station, 

 Camp 11, below Steveville, the raw bare landscape, scanty buffalo 

 grass, sage brush and prickly pear cactus proclaimed the typical 

 desert, except here and there on the narrow flood banks and in 

 traces along the lower courses of occasional intermittent creeks. 



The river valley as far as we followed it is practically unin- 



