97 Northern search 



native tents, looking for scraps of garbage. Little flocks of short- 

 billed gulls trotted along the beach on similar errands. Once we 

 saw a group of six whistling swans flying swiftly northward along 

 the far side of West Channel, and both the pomarine and long- 

 tailed jaegers were observed close to shore. In the evening the 

 "winnowing song" of the Wilson's snipe was frequently heard 

 along the banks, both toward the Pokiak and upstream along the 

 Peel. They must breed in the wooded portion of the delta in 

 great numbers. An article in the Canadian Field Naturalist on the 

 birds of the delta by A.E. Porsild gave many of the Eskimo names 

 for birds. We were not only much entertained by them, but they 

 proved helpful in discussing birds with the natives. There was no 

 name for the whooping crane, but one of the older Eskimos, 

 Douglas Oniak, had told Porsild that he had seen the big white 

 birds with the black wingtips many years ago in that region. 



Now that our fuel had arrived we needed only good weather 

 to begin our work. But a cold rain and poor visibility kept us 

 grounded until the sixteenth, when we finally took off and 

 skimmed out across the wide delta. Beyond the Caribou Hills, 

 in the direction of the Eskimo Lakes, where we had hoped we 

 might find whooping cranes, the visibility was poor. It was not 

 until the following day that flying conditions improved to such 

 an extent that we were able to have our first look at the tundra 

 near the Eskimo Lakes. To our dismay, most of the lakes were 

 still completely frozen and, with its higher elevation and the 

 total absence of the warming effect of the great body of water 

 flowing down the river, this entire upland tundra area was weeks 

 behind the delta in shaking off the icy hand of winter. We saw a 

 good many ducks and geese, however, as well as whistling swans, 

 willow ptarmigan, and little brown cranes, but no sign of whoop- 

 ing cranes. The Beaufort Sea was a solid expanse of ice, right to 

 the shore. The small coastal settlements of Kittigazuit and Tuk- 

 tuk were completely frozen in and looked like the Arctic stations 

 that they are. Yet it was quite mild, the outside temperature at a 

 100-foot altitude along the coast being 28 F. on the eighteenth of 

 June. 



During this period, until the end of June, we logged nearly 



