229 We find terra incognita! 



are found show a poor or disorganized drainage. Therefore they 

 are isolated, and individual in character. 



Dewey Soper has pointed out that Wood Buffalo Park is one 

 of the largest, most isolated, and most northerly park areas in 

 North America. It consists of 17,300 square miles of virgin wilder- 

 ness, or a total area of about 11,072,000 acres. From a biogeo- 

 graphical point of view it occupies a relatively high boreal position 

 in the Canadian zone, with portions that tend toward Hudsonian. 

 The plant life as a whole is regarded by some authors as sub- 

 arctic. A total of 461 different plants of 449 distinct species have 

 been described from the area, as well as 46 mammals and more 

 than 216 birds. Soper classifies the over-all biotic region as a 

 Coniferous Forest formation, with numerous subtypes. His descrip- 

 tion of the subtype most nearly represented by the crane-pond 

 area is as follows: "Open muskegs of little or no drainage with 

 ponds, and typical 'quaking' bog cover of mosses and herbaceous 

 growth, commonly associated with shrubs and small widely-scat- 

 tered black spruce and tamarack, and encircled by a marginal 

 zone of willows, dwarf birch, etc.; horned grebe, common loon, 

 sora rail, lesser yellow-legs, Bonaparte's gull, and red-winged black- 

 bird." 



With only slight alterations this is the general nature of the 

 biotic area in which the whooping crane has been found nesting. 

 Omit the term muskegs, add Scirpus and Typha marshes, and, 

 along with sora rails, yellowlegs, and red-wings add arctic loon, 

 Wilson's snipe, solitary sandpiper, mallard, green-winged teal, 

 and short-billed gull and you have it. 



The fauna of the ponds, except for the whooping cranes them- 

 selves, seems in no way remarkable. There were the nymphs of 

 dragonflies, damsel flies, and May flies, a larval form of the caddis 

 fly, several diving beetles, backswimmers, water boatmen, and water 

 striders. Also a colorful water mite (Eylais sp.), at least two kinds 

 of midges, and many bristleworms. Doubtless, frogs and snails 

 are the most important whooping-crane food. Both the wood frog 

 and the chorus frog were observed, while mollusks included such 

 forms as pond snails, bladder snails, wheel snails, and several 



