84 On the trail of vanishing birds 



istic of our Flotten camp as the cries of the grebes and the loons. 



On the twenty-first, in spite of the condition of the roads fol- 

 lowing several days of rain, we headed back to the settlement. 

 We were nearly out of groceries. I had had no word from Bob 

 Smith and it was essential that I make some arrangement for a 

 supply of gasoline if we were to fly out of Flotten during early 

 June. Those first days at Flotten had been unforgettable. In its own 

 way, the spell of stormy weather had made our camp life interest- 

 ing and exciting, so that we cherished the most ordinary things. 

 To be able to sit quietly for a moment instead of chopping fire- 

 wood, to put on a pair of dry woolen socks, nicely warm from 

 hanging in front of the fire, to lean back at sundown, after a hot 

 supper, watching the embers in the open hearth and listening to 

 the many voices on the lake these were simple pleasures that 

 we enjoyed to the utmost. There were moments when I almost 

 wished we might stay right there, undisturbed and forgotten. 



We found our way to the settlement and sent out and received 

 the necessary messages. The local agent for Imperial Oil agreed 

 to set up a 1,000-gallon tank on the shore of the lake and send 

 up a tank truck to fill it. I talked with an endless stream of "old- 

 timers" who recalled having seen whooping cranes, most of them 

 in bygone years, although two seemingly reliable reports placed 

 our birds near Meadow Lake in May, 1946, and on the preceding 

 April 20, just one month before our arrival. Each of these old- 

 timers had his own idea of just where they were nesting, and I 

 went over maps with them until I was dizzy. First this location 

 seemed to be favored, then that one. One old man thought that 

 the Muskeg River was undoubtedly the place, while another liked 

 any part of the area to the west of Lost Lake. The practical diffi- 

 culty was that these men were limited by pack-horse distances and 

 they knew little of the country in summer beyond 30 airline miles 

 from the hills north of Flotten. On the other hand, with our plane 

 we would cover that entire region in an hour's time and then, like 

 the cranes themselves, spread out over limitless distances. At that 

 time we had only a hazy notion of the type of country we could 

 expect to find our birds inhabiting. In spite of past performance 

 and the nature of former breeding sites elsewhere, no one knew 



