BIRDS

Introduction

Birds are such an important part of Vuntut Gwitchin life that several months of the year are named for birds or defined by what birds are doing. For example, June is Ch'adagh'oo Zrii [Birds Lay Eggs], July is Ch'asachoo Zrii [Ducks Don’t Fly Because Change in Feathers], August is Vananh Neendijaa Zrii [Ducks Start Flying Again], March is Ch'izhin Zrii [eagle month], and April is Ch'ichee Zrii [falcon month] according to the Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation 1999 Calendar for Old Crow (VGFN 1999).

The Old Crow Flats, the homeland of "the people among the lakes," contains important breeding habitat for an estimated 500,000 waterbirds (Conant and Dau 1990). Thousands of ducks and geese gather on the shallow lakes and wetlands of the Flats to raise their young, moult, and prepare for the flight back to their wintering ground. Densities of ducks on the Old Crow Flats are estimated at 80 ducks per square kilometer, two to three times higher than in any of the eleven primary waterfowl breeding grounds surveyed in Alaska by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Hawkings and Hughes 1995). Among the most numerous of the waterfowl are scaup, white-winged and surf scoters, American wigeon, northern pintails, canvasbacks, and oldsquaw. Several of these species are used by the Vuntut Gwitchin for food. The high productivity of waterfowl was a main factor in the designation of the Old Crow Flats as a wetland of international importance under the Ramsar Convention in 1982 (IUCN 1987). Protection of the important waterfowl habitat was also paramount in the setting up of the Old Crow Flats Special Management Area and Vuntut National Park. The importance of Old Crow Flats to the continental waterfowl population (and southern harvesting) has been confirmed by banding returns (Mossop and Hayes 1977, Hawkings 1999).

Although the waterfowl of the Old Crow Flats are the most spectacular and numerous birds of the Old Crow Basin, there are also many other less obvious species of birds about which we have far less biological information.

The geographical area of interest covered by this chapter is the Old Crow Flats Special Management Area, including Vuntut National Park, which covers a large part of the Old Crow Basin ( Figure 11.1, map of Old Crow Basin). The Old Crow Basin is a huge bowl-shaped structural depression between the eastern and interior mountain systems of the northern Cordillera. The Old Crow Basin consists of the Old Crow Flats, which form the floor of the basin, and the British, Richardson, and Old Crow Mountains which form the upper rim, and the slopes and pediments between the mountains and the Flats which form the sides of the Basin. Each of these areas has its own variety of habitats and hence, its own variety of bird life.