Sept., 1918 183 



SOME SUMMER BIRDS OF ALERT KAY, BRITISH COLUMBIA* 



By P. A. TAVERNER 



DURING the summer of 1917, being enroute to Prince Rupert from Vancou- 

 ver and having a few days to spare, I inquired as to the best available 

 stopping place along the coast of Vancouver Island north of Comox, the 

 northernmost station where systematic collections have been made on the Isl- 

 and. Alert Bay seemed the place most easy of access and here I arrived August 

 9 and collected industriously until the 15th. 



Alert Bay is an Indian village situated on Cormorant Island, opposite the 

 mouth of the Nimkish River off the northeast shore of Vancouver Island near 

 the head of Johnstone Strait. Just to the north is Malcolm Island and beyond 

 lie the waters of Queen Charlotte Sound. Cormorant Island is about five miles 

 long and less than a mile wide. Down its center runs a rocky ridge, badly burned 

 along its crest, but clothed with heavy timber along the shores. The village it- 

 self is situated around the bend of the bay, on the west side of the island and 

 facing the main steamer channel and Vancouver Island opposite, about two miles 

 away. It is a characteristic west coast Indian village of community houses and 

 carved totem poles, fringing a board walk just back of a bouldery beach encum- 

 bered with rotting canoes, boats and garbage. Behind rise the bare, steep and 

 stony sides of the backbone of the island. At either end of the Indian village are 

 a few homes of a small white population, the Indian agent, missionary and those 

 engaged in the salmon cannery or the saw mill, which are the only organized in- 

 dustries. Beyond the row of houses and still along the shores at either hand, 

 the dense evergreen timber comes down to high water mark. The bush is all but 

 impenetrable. On the slopes dense growths of moss, ferns and underbrush con- 

 ceal treacherous, loosely piled boulders. Over this is laid a mass of fallen timber 

 of large size which has to be climbed over, with unexpected pitfalls on the other 

 side hidden by the rank damp vegetation. Through this rise great straight 

 trunks of evergreens reaching fifty feet or so without a branch and continuing 

 upward one to two hundred feet. The burnt ridge forms practically the only 

 clearing on the island and this is so generally gridironed with fallen stuff as to 

 be heart breaking to the collector. A path across the island, after climbing a 

 break in the ridge, descends to low ground where it assumes the aspect of a can- 

 yon through the densest kind of deciduous and evergreen brush. There is a 

 wide, sandy beach on the east side of the island. There are no farms of any 

 kind. A few white inhabitants have small kitchen gardens immediately adjoin- 

 ing their houses, and an attempt had been made to plant a patch of potatoes 

 amidst the bracken on a comparatively clear spot on the ridge, while three or four 

 cows picked a living from between the fallen timber in a limited area adjoining. 

 Across on Vancouver Island the mouth of the Nimkish River opens into a 

 wide bay revealing great stretches of seaweed-covered mud flats at low tide. 

 The bush is heavy, as described about Alert Bay, and only to be traversed along 

 old grown-up logging tracks or by the disused logging railroad that leads back 

 five miles to Nimkish Lake. Small clearings exist in the neighborhood and there 

 is a considerable amount of local slashing and old clearing so grown up with un- 

 derbrush as to be impassable without a brush hook except by infinite exertion 

 and patience. 



Published by permission of the Geological Survey, Canada. 



