Chapter Three: Arctic Rendezvous
We follow sanderlings to the Arctic, encounter a killing snow storm, meet new named characters, watch Silverbar build a nest and protect her chicks from predators, and observe the start of the migration south.
Named characters include Silverbar, a sanderling; Uhvinguk, a lemming mouse; Ookpik, a male snowy owl; Blackfoot, an older sanderling and Silverbar’s mate; Tullugak, a raven; Canutus, a knot; Kigavik, a gyrfalcon; and Father Nicollet, “the old priest in his mission on the west shore of Hudson Bay.”
Sentences to admire:
- But in the Arctic barrens the June sun dips so briefly below the horizon that each of the night hours is an hour of twilight or song light, filled with the bubbling song of the longspur and the calls of the horned ark. (p. 37) What a lovely phrase: “song light.”
- From the end of the first hour onward the flight was no longer divided into flocks but became continuous. Now a mighty river of birds poured through the sky, lengthening as it flowed south and east across the barrens, across the head of the northland bay, and on and on through skies that lightened to the coming of another day. (p. 43) How magnificent it must have been to witness this massive presence of plovers in the sky.
- In them burned once more the fever of migration, consuming with its fires all other desires and passions. (p. 44) Here is the secret of instinct.