Things didn't go as planned of course. Mel met me last night in Edmonton, suffering from a head cold that had plugged his ears so badly that he couldn't hear anything I said to him. He and I flew on to Yellowknife. Pete, Linda, and Scott were nowhere to be seen. Air travel purgatory had left them stranded overnight in Edmonton.

Mel and I were up the next morning (Tues., Aug. 8th) at six. The air was still and refreshingly cool and we began hearing sparrow and warbler call notes almost immediately as we walked down towards the shore of Great Slave Lake. Some decongestant and a good night's sleep had opened up Mel's ears. I could tell he was feeling 100% better, especially as we started seeing little bunches of sparrows on the edges of a weedy lot—White-crowned, Lincoln's, Savannah, Chipping, and a few White-throats. In a willow tangle nestled up against a grassy marsh we spent an hour studying a flock of mottled, drab, and pretty confusing fall warblers. Yellows and Orange-crowneds made up the bulk with a few Yellow-rumps, Blackpolls, and Wilson's mixed in. A Common Snipe flew up along the trail while Alder Flycatcher's ree-be-o'd from nearby. Mel spotted a skittish Common Redpoll that was lured in for a few seconds by our pishing before diving back into the thicket.

We picked up Pete, Linda, and Scott at the airport around 10:00 AM. Pete had timed how long after take off from Edmonton before the square blocks of cultivated land, roadways, and other human indents on the landscape began to disappear. Something like 20 minutes I think he said, then nothing but the welcome sight of hundreds of miles of intact Boreal habitat. One single road crossed the northern tip of Wood Buffalo National Park (the breeding home to most of the world's Whooping Cranes) on its way to dead end at the little community of Fort Smith. Finally after several hours of flying, massive Great Slave Lake--one of the world's largest lakes, came in to view.

It's miles and miles of miles and miles.

That's how one local Yellowknifer put it, when I mentioned how awestruck we all were by the immense size of the Boreal. And we had only flown over a small portion of it on our way here!

With the whole group finally all here we did a little tour of the Old Town section of Yellowknife then a short drive over to Vee Lake. Here and there along the way we saw little families of Red-necked and Horned Grebes, a female Greater Scaup with nine fluffy ducklings, and some Canvasbacks. At the Yellowknife dump we spotted a couple of Bald Eagles and at least one California Gull among the swarm of Herring Gulls before a security guard arrived.

We spent the afternoon peppering some of the NWT's front line conservation heroes with questions. Shannon and Alicia with Ducks Unlimited and Daryl with Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society are working to help establish protected areas and develop plans for this vast region. And boy do they know their stuff!

Later over dinner with Shannon and Alicia on an outdoor patio overlooking the lake, we watched two Common Terns stroke by. We heard tales of Mel's visit to a tiny island 400 miles off the Chilean coast with a runway bounded by cliffs on both ends and Alicia's recent petal-the-metal birding tour stretching from Arizona to Big Bend, Texas and back in under a week. And Pete was in heaven when Shannon asked him for advice on binoculars.

I ended the evening giving a presentation at the Yellowknife Library for a local group called Ecology North. We all stayed talking about birds and Boreal conservation until the library finally had to close. Great to meet some of Yellowknife's birders, biologists, and conservationists.