When a new book on the birds of Cambridge Bay arrived last week in my mailbox I was thrilled: “Birds of Cambridge Bay, southeastern Victoria Island and adjacent small islands, Nunavut, Canada,” by Jim Richards and Richard Knapton provides as much information as any Arctic birder, wannabe or otherwise, could hope for.
That’s in addition to many spectacular photos of the birds you can see around this area of western Nunavut.
The book brought back memories many personal sightings of birds around Cambridge Bay, such has this hawk basking in warm September sun with Ovayok (Mt. Pelly) in the distance.
The new bird book, published by Polar Knowledge Canada, notes you could stand to see about 156 birds with 51 breeding in the region. Some 74 vagrants have also been recorded, with species diversity likely to increase under climate change, the book notes.
The birds you can now see regularly around the town of Cambridge Bay include buntings, red polls, trumpeter swans, loons, falcons, snowy owls, cranes and stunning king eiders, just to mention a few I have seen.
While there a still a lack of year-round birding observations, the book says, it meticulously reflects what Richards, who first visited Cambridge Bay in 1990, has recorded as well as information from the various birding trips of Knapton and notes from others on local birds (including me,) before and after.
Ornithologist Richards also authoured the magnificent two-volume “Birds of Nunavut,” which I reviewed for the Nunatsiaq News. My review copies of that landmark publication on Nunavut’s birds are now at the May Hakongak library in Cambridge Bay, along with other volumes from my other Arctic book collection.
