An Eskimo went with us in the launch around to this bird mountain. We climbed up the slope to a regular place they use where there was a sort of rough blind made out of the loose stones. He carried a net with a long handle. We sat down on the slope, partly hidden by the blind. Then the birds would fly past, always in the same direction. They seemed to be always on the move, getting up off the rocks and swinging around in a great circle out over the sea and back again. There were thousands of them.
As a bird would fly past us, almost near enough to touch sometimes, the Eskimo [[67]]would make a quick swoop with the net, and plop a dovkie would be in it. Then he would quickly pull in the net, take the bird out, kill it and be ready for another. This is chiefly the work for women who are awfully good at it and catch hundreds and I guess thousands. They are fine eating, and the skins are used for making bird feather clothing, as lining to wear next the skin.
After our Eskimo friend Kaweah had showed us how to do it, I tried. It looked awfully easy. But it wasn’t. I made a lot of misses.
Dad and Dan Streeter were looking on and taking pictures, and they laughed as I swiped at the birds and missed them.
“Three strikes and out!” they’d call when I scored three misses.
But after a while I did catch a few, and some I just hit with the net pole and knocked them down, sort of stunned, when we got them. Dad and Dan also tried, but they [[68]]didn’t break any records. A fellow with a batting eye like Babe Ruth ought to do pretty well at this game. Anyway, it was great fun, and was of course the first time I ever caught birds with a net. Funnily, almost the next day I actually did catch some others with a loop on a string.
Where the vessel lay that afternoon was right next a big lot of bay ice, pans of ice with some water between them. In the distance here and there we could see seal. They sit up in the sun, but almost always right near a hole in the ice. And the minute they get frightened they slide off and are gone. Even if you shoot them, unless death is very quick, they are likely to flop off into the water, where they sink.
Dan and one of the Eskimos tried some stalking, crawling up on the seal or pooeesee as the Eskimos call them. And he had pretty good luck, hitting three, two of which they got. They also got pretty wet crawling over [[69]]the ice and through pools of water melted by the sun. Anyway, it was our first game. The seal meat was fine, too.
The next morning we had moved northward to Parker Snow Bay. We were anchored there when I woke up. It’s a beautiful place, a little bay right on the coast, with a bit of flat land with a glacier coming right down behind it and stretching up to the great ice cap. Two steep fine mountains are on either side of the glacier, and one of them we named Bartlett Peak. Along the shore one of these mountains has steep cliffs which fall right down into the water. And there is a great bird rookery, or loomery as the Newfoundland folks call it.
On the shore we saw a blue fox. And then after breakfast we went to work at the rookery to get specimens. It was a beautiful calm sunny day and we really had a grand time. Some of us were at it until afternoon and sent back a dory to bring us some lunch. [[70]]