2 Bird-Nesting 



Although the following pages will be found devoted chiefly 

 to the nidification of birds in the North- West, still I have also 

 endeavored to make this book useful as a guide to sportsmen 

 and anglers who intend visiting this territory, and will attempt 

 to cover some of the best shooting and fishing points in the 

 vast expanse of prairies, brush-lands and lakes, lying between 

 the eastern boundary of Manitoba and the Rocky Mountains. 



Roughly speaking the prairie country is about 1000 miles 

 wide, while other vast tracts extend far to the north of the 

 Canadian Pacific Railway, offering inducements for special ex- 

 plorations to the Ornithologists who can afford to devote 

 sufficient time to the work, for it is within this region that 

 most of our rarest plovers, sandpipers, swans, ducks and geese, 

 retire to lay their eggs and bring forth their young. 



Of the birds of this prairie country, i.e., the Provinces of 

 Manitoba, Assiniboia and Alberta, too much can hardly be said. 

 They simply comprise the " happy hunting-grounds " of the 

 Ornithologist dreams, and only those who have tested for 

 themselves their amazing resources, can have any idea of the 

 variety of birds to be found there. 



But the reader unacquainted with the country may ask : 

 Wherein lies the special superiority of the Canadian North- 

 West, and why is it better than any other region ? 



The answer is easily found. These rolling, grassy seas of 

 rich prairie-land, intersected with an endless succession of lakes 

 and sloughs, are the natural breeding-grounds now, as they 

 have been for ages in the past, of the swift- winged myriads of 

 migratory water-fowl that every spring, in obedience to their 

 wonderful instinct, rise in blackening clouds from the drained 

 lands, lagoons and rice fields of the south, and fan their long 

 way over states and provinces, league after league, until they 

 have gained these secure and lonely haunts, where they can 

 reproduce their species unmolested by the destroyer. The 

 lakes, streams and marshes are the fitting homes of these fowl, 

 and they break the vast expanses of grass everywhere. There 

 is a practically inexhaustible supply of food, and consequently 

 the birds return year after year to the same points where they 



