xiv PREFACE 



tain the best description we have of this region ; 

 in these reports there are short references to 

 birds. When Edward A. Preble wrote his great 

 report on the natural history of the Athabasca- 

 Mackenzie Region * he included all that was 

 known of the birds of the Churchill River up 

 to 1908. 



" When the boundaries of Saskatchewan were 

 in 1912 extended north to include a part of the 

 old North- West Territory, so little was known by 

 the Provincial Government of the natural history 

 of the northern part of the country that Angus 

 Buchanan determined to investigate the country 

 lying between the Saskatchewan River and the 

 Barren Grounds. He left Prince Albert on 

 May 6, 1914, and descended the Beaver River 

 to Lake lie a la Crosse, and the Churchill River, 

 thence continuing upstream on Reindeer River 

 and Reindeer Lake, entering the Cochrane River 

 on July 18, and Lake Du Brochet on August 1. 

 His base camp was made north of this lake, 

 and here he proposed to winter, but hearing of 

 the outbreak of the war in late October he 

 decided to return to the South, and reached 

 Regina on January 15, 1915, after an absence of 

 eight and a half months, during which he travelled 

 nearly two thousand miles by canoe and dog- 

 sleigh. The birds collected during this expedi- 

 tion were divided ; part were deposited in the 

 Provincial Museum at Regina, and the rest were 

 handed over to me ; they form a very important 



1 A Biological Investigation of the Athabasca- Mackenzie Region. 

 North American Fauna, No. 27. Bureau of Biological Survey, 

 Washington, 1908. 



