Sept., 1918 SOME SUMMER BIRDS OF ALERT BAY, BRITISH COLUMBIA* 183 By P. A. TAVERNER ' D UR1NG 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 populati on, 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 ?he 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 a.nd old clearing so grown up with un- derbrush as to be impassable without a brush hook except by infinite exertion and patience.
- P?lblished by permission of the Geological Survey, Canada.
