1920.] IVie Birds of Saskutcheivaii and Manitoba, 395 



XI. — A List of the Birds collected in Northern Saskatchewan 

 and Northern Manitoba by Captain Buchanan iyi 1914. By 

 J. H. Fleming, C.M.Z.S., C^.M.B.O.U. 



Almost the first knowledge we have of the ornithology of 

 the Saskatchewan region is that contained in a series of papers 

 published in ' The Ibis ' of 1861-62-63 by Captain Blakiston, 

 who spent the winter of 1857-58 at Port Carlton on the 

 Saskatchewan River, and in 1858 collected at various points 

 in what is now the Province of Saskatchewan. In these 

 papers he incorporated information contained in vol. ii. of 

 the ' Fauna Boreali-Americana ' of Richardson and Swainson, 

 and other published sources of information. Since then our 

 knowledge of the birds of southern Saskatchewan has been 

 considerably enlarged, but strangely enough the ornithology 

 of the great region drained by the Churchill River and lying 

 to the north of what was till 1912 the northern boundary of 

 the province has had little or no attention paid to it. Notes 

 on the birds were made by James M. Macoun, who in 1888 

 travelled east from Lesser Slave Lake by way of the Atha- 

 basca and Churchill Rivers to Lake Winnipeg, and these 

 were eventually published by John Macoun in his ' Cata- 

 logue of Canadian Birds.' Less than a dozen specimens are 

 in the U.S. National Museum, collected at Du Brochet 

 Lake in 1890 and Pelican Narrows on the Churchill River 

 in 1891, probably by Henry MacKay and Joseph Hourston, 

 for Roderick MacFarlane ; these are the only skins I have 

 seen from the region taken previous to 1914. During the 

 years 1892-93-94, J. Burr Tyrrell in the course of his 

 explorations of the Barren Grounds more than once traversed 

 the Churchill River, and his official reports * contain the 

 best description \\ e have of this region ; in these there are 

 short references to birds. When Edward A. Preble wrote 



* Annual Report Geological Survey of Canada, viii. (new series). 

 Part D, pp. 50-120 I), Ottawa, 1890 ; ibid. ix. 1890, I'art F (1897). 



