Читать книгу Arctic Searching Expedition (Sir John Richardson) - comprehensive & illustrated - (Literary Thoughts Edition) онлайн

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The black-bellied tern (Hydrochelidon nigra) is also abundant on these waters, and ranges northwards to the upper part of the Mackenzie. And the Cayenne tern (Sterna cayana) is common in this quarter and onwards to beyond the arctic circle; but notwithstanding Mr. Rae's expertness as a fowler, and eagerness to procure me a specimen, the extreme wariness of the bird frustrated all his endeavours until this day, when he brought one down, and gave me an opportunity of examining it, which I was glad to do, since from want of a northern specimen the bird was not noticed in the Fauna Boreali-Americana. Mr. Audubon mentions the great difficulty of shooting this bird, and he succeeded in doing so only by employing several boats to approach its haunts in different directions. Albert, our Eskimo interpreter, told me that it does not visit Hudson's Bay.

I was also indebted to Mr. Rae's gun for specimens of the brown crane (Grus canadensis). Mr. Audubon, who is so competent an authority on all questions relating to American birds, and whose recent death all lovers of natural history deplore, was of opinion, in common with many other ornithologists, that the brown crane is merely the young of the large white crane (Grus americana); but, though I concede that the young of the latter are grey, I think that the brown species is distinct; first, because it is generally of larger dimensions than the white bird, and secondly, because it breeds on the lower parts of the Mackenzie and near the Arctic coasts, where the Grus americana is unknown. As far as I could ascertain, the latter bird does not go much further north than Great Slave Lake. At Fort aux Liards, on the River of the Mountains, large flocks of cranes pass continually to the westward, from the 17th to the 20th of September; the grey and white birds being in different bands, and the former of smaller size, like young birds. Very rarely during the summer a flock of white cranes passes over Fort Simpson in latitude 62° N. The brown cranes, on the other hand, which frequent the banks of the Mackenzie from Fort Norman, in latitude 65° N. down to the sea-coast, are generally in pairs. They are in the habit of dancing round each other very gracefully on the sand-banks of the river.