Honks and trills of arriving birds lift spirits

To celebrate Nunavut Day, Nunatsiaq News invited readers to share what makes their corner of the territory special to them.

Tanya Tungilik

I love when all the birds arrive in the springtime in Rankin Inlet.

When I see the first seagulls come to replace the ravens, I know spring has sprung.

When the snow geese, Canada geese, tundra swans, and sandhill cranes arrive, their honking and trills lifts my spirits.

The little songbirds make my heart soar with their lovely singing, like the snow buntings, white-crowned sparrows, savannah sparrows, common redpolls, horned larks, lapland longspurs, and American pipits. I have learned to whistle some of their songs, and I like to watch as they come to investigate who the interloper is.

I love the haunting songs of the common and Arctic loons that echo across the lakes. I like to watch the diving birds, like the northern pintail ducks, common eider ducks, and my favourite are the long-tailed ducks. We call those agiarjuk or a’angiq, for the sounds they make “a’a’angiq!”

There is a semipalmated plover that hangs around at my mom’s cabin that we have named Alfie, after the director Alfred Hitchcock, because of his distinctive round profile.

It’s always exciting to find wayward birds that have been blown off course too.

One year we saw a turkey vulture circling around Itivia. At my mom’s cabin we saw two male yellow-rumped warblers.

There was a beautiful mountain bluebird near my office. We’ve also seen dark-eyed juncos, some kind of flycatcher, and last year there was an egret behind my place.

This year there is a tree swallow swooping around Itivia, catching flies on the wing!

Tanya Tungilik lives in Rankin Inlet.