58 Bird-Nesting 



can widgeon, shoveller, harlequin, long-tail, eider and other ducks. 



Early in May my companion collected two clutches of Can- 

 ada geese at this lake. They were taken to the station 

 house at Rush Lake and put under a turkey, which was sit- 

 ting on the eggs during my stay. At the house was a brood 

 of five young Canada geese about two weeks old. The eggs 

 had been collected at this lake the latter end of April, and put 

 under a hen to hatch, and the hen paid them as much atten- 

 tion as if they had been her own offspring. Every spring a 

 number of eggs of the Canada geese are collected and hatched 

 out by turkeys or hens in this way, and when the geese are 

 full grown, they are killed and eaten. 



This is the only species of goose that remains to breed in 

 this region ; but in the autumn large flocks of snow geese, 

 called waveys by the natives, and white-fronted and Hutchins' 

 geese visit Rush Lake, as well as numbers of trumpeter and 

 whistling swans. 



We collected a number of sets of terns, gulls and avosets on 

 this island, and then waded back to the island nearest the 

 shore where we had left the other birds' eggs. We filled our 

 hats, boxes and handkerchiefs with eggs and carried them to 

 shore. As we had more eggs than we could carry, we decided 

 to leave most of them until the following day, when we in- 

 tended to return with a large basket. So we scraped a large 

 hole in the sand and laid the eggs in it, and covered them 

 with grass and sand, only taking along with us as many 

 clutches as we could conveniently carry. On the return jour- 

 ney, we disturbed a willet off its nest and eggs, and also flushed a 

 McCown's longspur from its nest and five eggs. The nest of 

 the latter was made of dried grass, and lined with a few hairs 

 and built flush with the ground under the shelter of a tuft of 

 grass. The eggs are pale greyish white, spotted with dark 

 purple brown, and also mottled with purplish grey. 



After two hours' tramp over the prairie, we reached Rush 

 Lake tired and hungry. After supper, the manager of the farm 

 situated west of Rush Lake, called at the station house, and I was 

 introduced to him, and he promised to drive me next day to a 

 lake ten miles north, near the South Saskatchewan river. 



