Birds. 7831 



Recollections of the Swans and Geese of Hudson^ s Bay. 

 By George Barnston, Esq., of the Hon. Hudson's Bay Company.* 



The birds comprising the two genera Cyguus and Anser are, with 

 slight exception, the largest of the Palmipedes, or vveb-lboted fowls, 

 found in North America ; and, being generally difficult of approach, 

 and at the same time highly prized as an article of food, any account 

 of their migrations and habits becomes interesting. Of the many who 

 may have enjoyed the relish of a well-seasoned wild goose at the 

 sumptuons banquet, few are aware of the distance the bird may have 

 travelled, or of the many perils, by flood and field, through which it 

 may have' passed. 



On the coast of Hudson's Bay their manners may be studied to 

 great advantage. There they repose after a long and fatiguing flight; 

 there they enjoy a perfect surfeit on the juicy roots of the swamps, 

 and the tender sprouting herbage of the boundless downs ; and there, 

 assembled in a mass along the sea-girt shore, they follow the never- 

 varying course of the points and headlands that stand out revealed as 

 the line of march of all their ancestors who have gone before them. 



The swan, except in a few particular localities, is a scarce rather 

 than a plentiful bird on the shores of Hudson's Bay. Of somewhat 

 ponderous flight, swans are seen at the same time as the other migra- 

 tory tribes, winging their way to the secluded recesses of the north, 

 resting themselves throughout the interior, and losing units of their 

 number here and there by the Indian's gun. In the scarcity of their 

 favourite food, the tubers of the Sagittaria sagittifolia, they have 

 recourse to the roots of other plants, and the tender under-ground 

 runners of grasses in the higher latitudes. They sometimes breed in 

 the interior before arriving at the coast. I had two eggs brought to 

 me from the borders of a lake near Norway House, latitude nearly 

 hb'^ N. ; but it was impossible for me to say whether these were of 

 the Cygnus americanus or C. Buccinator ; the probability rests with 

 the former. 



Towards Eastmain James's Fort, in James's Bay, a considerable 

 number of swans hatch. A feiv are killed by the natives there, who 

 watch the game as it passes up and down narrow rivers commu- 

 nicating with the sea, and flowing from lakes of some magnitude scat- 

 tered over the interior. In the winter months all the northern regions 



* Bead before the Montreal Natural History Society, and reprinted from the 

 ' Canadian Naturalist' for October, 1861. 



