In the spring, flocks of tundra swans migrate north, filling open bodies of water and open sky with their inelegant honking en route to their arctic nesting grounds. Sandhill cranes, brant goose, steller’s and spectacled eider ducks—a seemingly endless list of waterfowl, songbirds, shore birds, and raptors fly their way to or through the tundra, to nest and raise their young, or rest while they moult, or for the feasting opportunities. Summer is the refuelling season.
Dunlins, a short-legged and stout sandpiper, travel from the coast of China to the Arctic to breed, and the red phalarope, a larger member of the sandpiper family, flies from as far away as the southern tip of South America to lay its eggs in tundra nests.
At Arctica we’ve got birds on the brain. We’re starting off the spring with an interview with filmmaker and biologist Joel Heath, who co-produced People of a Feather with the Community of Sanikiluaq. The documentary explores the lives of the Inuit of Sanikiluaq whose existence in the Belcher Islands of Hudson’s Bay has been as dependent on flocks of eider ducks, as some European lives have depended on herds of jersey cows. You can’t milk an eider duck, but the Inuit of Sanikiluaq traditionally make the most exquisite parkas with the eider’s feathered skins (see photo).
Revisit Arctica archives:
In “Excavation” read about Jennifer Kingsley’s insight on being a tour guide in the High Arctic on the Expedition.
Read this review of People of a Feather.
The editorial team, Arctica Magazine
Michele Genest hasn’t always cooked with northern ingredients. The boreal cook was vegetarian when she first moved to the Yukon. She was into Indian and Thai dishes, using the same four or five vegetables in different ways.
When you see Eleanor Rosenberg’s illustrations, it's clear she finds reality a little boring. Strict realism is just not her style.
For two years, film director and scientist Joel Heath spent his days in a box the length of a sheet of plywood.
