All this time the bird made a loud screaming noise like the cry of a child.
These owls were sometimes accustomed to follow the Indians for a whole day, and the Copper Indians believed that they would in some way conduct them to herds of deer and musk oxen, which without the birds' assistance might never be found.

They also warned Indians of the arrival of strangers.

The Eskimo, according to Hearne, paid no heed to these birds, and it was thus that they allowed themselves to be surprised and massacred, for if they had looked out from the direction in which the Chipewayans were lying in ambush, they would have seen a large flock of these owls continually flying about and making sufficient noise to awaken any man out of the soundest sleep.
The country on either side of the estuary of the Coppermine River was not without vegetation.

There were stunted pines and tufts of dwarf willows, and the ground was covered with a lichen or herb, which the English of the Hudson's Bay Company knew by the name of Wishakapaka,[7] and which they dried and used instead of tea.

There were also cranberry and heathberry bushes, but without fruit.