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All day long here, as on the Nyarling, I busied myself with compass and sketch-book, making the field notes, sketches, and compass surveys from which my various maps were compiled; and Preble let no chance go by of noting the changing bird and plant life that told us we quit the Canadian fauna at Stony Island and now were in the Hudsonian zone.
Several whales are well known. The Right is almost exterminated; but the Greenland, or Bow-head, is found along the edge of the ice in all Hudsonian waters. The Pollock is rare, and the Sperm, or Cachalot, as nearly exterminated as the Right.
Cattle and other live stock also are seriously molested by mosquitoes as well as by another set of pests, the horse-flies. Adults and larvae of these flies have been found in the stomachs of the dowitcher, the pectoral sandpiper, the hudsonian godwit, and the killdeer.
NORTH DAKOTA: Whooping crane, long-billed curlew, Hudsonian godwit, passenger pigeon; bison, elk, mule deer, mountain sheep. OHIO: Pigeon, wild turkey, pinnated grouse, northern pileated woodpecker, parrakeet; white-tailed deer, bison, elk, black bear, puma, gray wolf, beaver, otter, puma, lynx. OKLAHOMA: Records for birds insufficient. Mammals: bison, elk, antelope, mule deer, puma, black bear.
WISCONSIN: Double-crested cormorant, upland plover, white pelican, long-billed curlew, lesser snow goose, Hudsonian curlew, sandhill crane, golden plover, woodcock, dowitcher and long-billed duck; spruce grouse, knot, prairie sharp-tailed grouse, marbled godwit and bald eagle. All these, formerly abundant, must now be called rare in Wisconsin.
PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND: The species threatened with extinction are the golden plover, American woodcock, pied-billed grebe, red-throated loon, sooty shearwater, gadwall, ruddy duck, black-crowned night heron, Hudsonian godwit, kildeer, northern pileated woodpecker, chimney swift, yellow-bellied flycatcher, red-winged blackbird, pine finch, magnolia warbler, ruby-crowned kinglet.
The edge of the timber is the dividing line between the Hudsonian and the Arctic zones, It is the beginning of the country we had come to see; we were now in the land of the Caribou. At this point we were prepared to spend several days, leave a cache, gather a bundle of choice firewood, then enter on the treeless plains.
In all the woods of the Hudsonian Zone we found it evidently at home. But here I was privileged to find the first nest of the species known to science. The victory was robbed of its crown, through the nest having fledglings instead of eggs, but still it was the ample reward of hours of search.
Rob called them "Chickens"; farther south they are called "Fool Hens," which is descriptive and helps to distinguish them from their neighbours the "Sage Hens." Frequently now we heard the toy-trumpeting and the clack of the Pileated Woodpecker or Cock-of-the-Pines, a Canadian rather than a Hudsonian species. One day, at our three o'clock meal, a great splendid fellow of the kind gave us a thrill.
Among those able to hold their own, with proper encouragement, are the following: two loons, two murres, the puffin, guillemot, razor-billed auk, dovekie and pomarine jæger; six gulls ivory, kittiwake, glaucous, great black-back, herring and Bonaparte; two terns arctic and common; the fulmar, two shearwaters, two cormorants, the red-breasted merganser and the gannet; seven ducks the black, golden-eye, old squaw and harlequin, with the American, king and Greenland eiders; three scoters; four geese snow, blue, brant and Canada; two phalaropes, several sandpipers, with the Hudsonian godwit and both yellowlegs; two snipes; five plovers; and the Eskimo and Hudsonian curlews.
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