Page:The Passenger Pigeon - Mershon.djvu/225



192 an arboreous situation. The gentlemen number them among the many delicacies the Hudson's Bay affords our tables. It is a hardy bird, continuing with us until December. In summer their food is berries, but after these are covered with snow, they feed upon the juniper buds. They lay two eggs and are gregarious. About 1756 these birds migrated as far north as York Factory, but remained only two days."

In a report issued in 1795, Samuel Hearne also reports the birds being abundant inland from the southern portion of Hudson's Bay, but states that, though good eating, they were seldom fat.

The first provincial record is that made by Sir John Richardson in 1827, in which he says: "A few hordes of Indians who frequent the low floods districts at the south end of Lake Winnipeg subsist principally on the pigeons during the period when the sturgeon fishing is unproductive and the wild rice is still unripened, but farther north the birds are too few in numbers to furnish material diet."

I presume that he means farther up the Lake Winnipeg shores, since Hutchins and Hearne both reported them common nearer Hudson's Bay.

The early records of the birds in eastern Canada in later years corroborate the earlier statements of Wilson and Audubon in almost every particular; and one acquainted with the timbered conditions of the country to the immediate west of the Red River Valley and