List of birds of Nunavut

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The Canadian territory of Nunavut has over 100 species of birds nearly all of which are migratory, with only the common raven, the snowy owl and the rock ptarmigan spending the winter. Most, if not all birds migrate to Nunavut for breeding purposes and tend to return to the same nesting grounds each year.

Birds may be found all through Nunavut but not all birds are to be seen throughout the territory. Thus the horned lark can be found in all areas or Nunavut, except Ellesmere Island, the sparrow is rarely found outside of the mainland and the plovers are usually found only on the east coasts of Baffin Island and Ellesmere Island.

Along with the regular birds can be found the occasional vagrant such as the barn swallow or blue jay but they are not covered here.

Traditional usage

Beside a food source the Inuit had several other ways of using birds:

There are several dialects of Inuktitut and Inuinnaqtun plus two alphabets, Inuktitut syllabics and Latin. The Inuit name or spelling may differ from one region to another and in extreme cases from one community to another. Thus the word bird may be: ᑎᖕᒥᐊᑦ or tingmiaq.

Ducks (mitiq, mitik), geese and swans

Loons

Tubenoses

Birds of prey

Falcons

Grouse

Cranes

Plovers

Typical waders

Jaegers (skuas, ᐃᓱᙵᖅ, ihunngait, ihunngaq, isunngait)

Gulls (ᓇᐅᔭᖅ, naujaq)

Terns

Auks (tuulligjuak)

Owls

Larks

Pipits

Wheatears

Crows

Finches

Longspurs and snow buntings

Buntings and American sparrows

See also

Citations

    Further reading

    External links

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