Vatnabyggð

THE SASKATCHEWAN BIRDING TRAIL

by Joan Eyolfson Cadham

There is no voice-over for the first five minutes of the Iceland Television production which was filmed on-site during the official unveiling of the Vatnabyggð Icelandic Club memorial to Icelandic pioneers in Elfros, SK. The footage of this made-for-television special unwinds, revealing the streets and parks of a tiny (population 180) prairie town in July. The only sound is bird song. The audio track is alive with bird choruses, nature's own symphony.

Song birds are just one part of the reason that the Quill Lakes/Fishing Lake/Foam Lake Marsh area has been designated one of the anchors of the Saskatchewan Birding Trail. The three lakes (Vatnabyggð is Icelandic for "Lakes Settlement" and the original Icelanders came to the area in 1882 for hay and water for their cattle) attract 500,000 shorebirds each year and more than 700,000 migratory birds - ducks, Snow Geese, Canada Geese, Sandhill Cranes and White-Fronted Geese. Some make their summer home in the area and some have decided that local fields have been laid out as a smorgasbord for the gourmet - or gourmand - migratory bird.

From early spring to late fall, each cat tail-rimmed roadside marshy area, each little sapphire slough, each farm dugout, is home to a family or two of ducks or geese. One of the more comic sights in early spring is a pair of Canada Geese strolling across an ice-covered pot hole, wondering when the water will surface.

The Saskatchewan Birding Trail, anchored at one end by the Quills and/Fishing Lake and Foam Lake Marsh and at the other end by Chaplin Lake near Moose Jaw, will be a Canadian first. There are no provincial Bird Trails. The Saskatchewan Bird Trail concept is centered on the diverse nature of birds in Saskatchewan, the tremendous numbers of migrant species and the rare birds which may be viewed with some ease in the area.

The Trail concept is based on the Texas Coastal Birding Trail, the first phase of which opened in 1995. It provides loops for bird watchers, each loop beginning and ending in a service area that can provide food, lodging, and other related activities for visitors. Each loop leads to adjacent birding sites that contain different habitats and species. Nowhere along the Texas trail is a site more than 30 minutes from the next.

The Chaplin Lake site of the Saskatchewan Birding Trail is fairly well developed. Work - mostly upgrading - is in progress in the Quill Lake/Fishing Lake/Foam Lake area. There are already long term plans to expand, to involve Saskatoon, Yorkton, Swift Current. Planners would like a series of loops along Highway 16, the Yellowhead, the alternative route to the TransCanada Highway through Saskatchewan.

Although the formal Birding Trail is a new concept, Wadena has had a tower at Quill Lake for several years. Foam Lake has a tower at the Marsh. Plans are underway (spring of 2001) for improved facilities for visitors, including interpretive signs at the tower sites, better highway signs, one major Interpretive Centre, displays and information packages at all the Tourist booths in the area, and portable displays. The Foam Lake Marsh has serious Icelandic connections, with the main trails named Vatnabyggð. These trails convey the human history of the area. The Bertdale site parking lot will also honour Icelanders. The Inge house is visible from the site and a cairn will describe the arrival of the first families and describe the log school and the days when young Icelanders living on the west side of Foam Lake sailed across to school.

Ultimately, the Saskatchewan Birding Trail might capitalize on something that Saskatchewan has in abundant quantity, the special quality that Iceland TV discovered: Nothing. Parts of the Quill/Fishing Lake/Foam Lake area can still offer magic silence, the absence of manmade noise, a precious stillness through which birdsong can be heard..

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