The most comprehensive guide to Yukon birds ever published is currently in the works. Actually, it has been in the works for several years, but Pam Sinclair says the project is nearing completion.

The Environment Canada biologist is part of a team assembling information for the new book, Birds of the Yukon. At over 300 pages, it won't be a field guide, she says. It will be a species by species account of all the birds that have been sighted in the Yukon, a total of more than 250 different species.

All the information will be Yukon information, including detailed accounts of where and when the birds have been found, where and when they breed, and what habitats they use. Maps are being prepared for each species to show the locations of sightings and nesting records. The book will also include First Nations names for birds and traditional knowledge about them.

"Even the photographs are going to be photos of the bird taken in the Yukon," says Sinclair. The book will contain pen-and-ink drawings of most species, and Yukon photographs whenever they are available.

Over five years of data compilation have already gone into the project. The team working on the book has reviewed current records and historical records, "everything that was ever written down about birds in the Yukon," Sinclair says.

Some of the most interesting historical information has come from unexpected sources, she adds. The Anglican missionaries on Herschel Island at the turn of the century recorded information about the birds on the island and collected specimens of birds and eggs. George and Martha Black, both former Yukon Members of Parliament, recorded finding a pair of King Eiders, a species normally found on the Beaufort coast, on the Yukon River near Dawson.

One of the oddest sightings came from a man who ran a store at Fortymile a century ago. Charles Hall found a Red-legged Kittiwake, a small gull, near Fortymile downriver from Dawson.

"This bird is hardly ever found away from its nesting grounds on the Aleutian Islands," says Sinclair. Hall's find is the only record of this species in Canada.

Species are still being added regularly to the list of Yukon birds. In 1995, eight new species were reported, including some common nesting species in the southeastern part of the Territory. In 1996 more new finds were made, including four new species for the Yukon list and a colony of about 50 Black Terns nesting about 30 kilometres from Watson Lake.

"Before that, we had no idea Black Terns nested in the Yukon," she says. "Our knowledge of birds in the Yukon is still developing rapidly."

Compiling the information for Birds of the Yukon has involved both professional and amateur scientists. Local birders have provided plenty of information, Sinclair says. The Yukon Bird Club has helped to compile local information from its members and others around the Territory. After word of the project was spread through American birding magazines, the research team also received information from bird enthusiasts who had visited the Yukon and recorded bird sightings as they traveled.

Sinclair hopes the book will be published in 1998. All the data have been compiled and about half the species information has been written up, she says, but there's still a lot of work left to do.

"It's a really big project," she says. A similar project in British Columbia has taken 20 years so far, and the third volume of The Birds of British Columbia has just recently been published.

The Yukon project will continue, even after Birds of the Yukon is published, in the hope of updating the work eventually, Sinclair says.

"There's still so little known about birds in the Yukon, compared with almost anywhere else in North America," she says.

For more information about Yukon birds, contact the Canadian Wildlife Service, Environment Canada, in Whitehorse.