The Snow Buntings (Plectrophenax nivalis) have fledged, and there are young birds everywhere. The Snow Buntings are the earliest birds at everything up here. They are the first migrants to arrive, well before you could really say it is spring, the first to raise their young (at least amongst the migrants), and the earliest to fledge.
The young and their parents flit here and there, sometimes just steps away. They certainly are tame, and unfortunately that often proves their undoing. Young kids love to hunt snowbuntings up here, and stalk them everywhere with rocks. I’m not sure why so many do, but I do believe it is a cultural thing. I read a story at some point here how it was important that a boy kill his first bird and then his mother would cook it for him.
Hunting is important to Inuit. Being a skilled hunter meant the difference between survival and starvation. So hunting skills were developed and encouraged at an early age. Learning to stalk snow buntings and accurately throw a rock as a youth, could serve to develop the skills needed to provide for a family as an adult.
I’m a hunter, and a naturalist, and I’ve never seen a conflict between the two. I know there are many who do not, and indeed can not understand this dicotomy and that is unfortunate. Hunting has given me many hours of pleasure in the natural world, and has given me skills that make me a better naturalist. As I get older, I hunt less, and appreciate the hunt, rather than the end result, more. It has literally been years since I pulled a trigger and ended a hunt, although I look forward to the spring seal hunt, hunting the old fashion way, in family groups and without firearms. I fear my family would face starvation if this were the old days though.
But I must confess that when it comes to Snow Buntings it is the naturalist in me that wins out over the hunter. I always find myself cheering for the birds.