Canadian North--a medium size white jet with a yellow sun and polar bear painted on its blue tail--boards from the rear via a stairway. The rear boarding reminds me of some flights to and from small islands in the Caribbean. Once aboard I see there are three seats on each side and an unusual abbreviation of the cabin halfway to the front closed off with a plain white wall. Later a flight attendant opens a secret door and takes a peek to reveal a large cargo hold.

The flight is uneventful--it is cloudy much of the way--but I strike up a conversation with the young man next to me. He is a geologist and makes frequent trips from Edmonton to Yellowknife to do exploratory work for mining operations. Today he is on his way to Bathurst Inlet in the Arctic where he will be surveying soils for the next two weeks while trying to avoid any errant polar bears.

Coming down through the clouds after our 90 minute flight, I see Great Slave Lake and the northern shoreline. The land is characterized by rocky outcroppings surrounded by spruce and jack pine and low shrubby willows, alders, and birch and interspersed with bogs and ponds.

As we touch down my first bird is a Common Raven that is poking around along the edge of the runway. Second bird is a Herring Gull.

Daryl, the director of the NWT Chapter of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, somehow finds me at the airport--he must have been looking for the dazed eyes--and gives me a 30 minute tower of downtown Yellowknife. This town (city?) of 18,000 seems to me as if it is still teetering between a more modern sense and its gritty roots. There are rather fancy homes that Daryl explains sell for as much as half a million dollars and there are people living in houseboats who have to use a pail for toilet.

I check into the Chateau Nova. Its not a bad hotel though it has that frontier cold-weather industrial look from the outside. And it has Internet access!

Later, since it stays light until 10 AM, I walk over to the nature trails at nearby Niven Lake. You birders in the U.S. will be glad to know that Blackpoll Warblers are headed your way! I see one that is nearly fully moulted into its winter plumage but it is very scruffy as are all the birds I see. The lake is full of eclipse plumage, rough-looking and somewhat hard-to-identify ducks. There are Green-winged Teal (4), Mallard (several families with young), Gadwall, American Wigeon (35+), Canvasback (8), Lesser Scaup (3), and Bufflehead (1) plus several Horned Grebes with a couple of fairly old chicks. Other birds identified include Swamp Sparrow, Chipping Sparrow (in town), American Redstart, and Wilson's Warbler--all of these also in various stages of scruffy moult.

It is just past 10 PM now and only starting to get dark but it is off to bed for me. What birds await tomorrow before breakfast?

Jeff Wells
Senior Scientist
Boreal Songbird Initiative