The Bird occurrence is located near the headwaters of Finlayson Creek in the Cassiar Mountains, approximately 90 kilometres north of the community of Dease Lake.
Gold- and silver-bearing white quartz veins occur in the Sylvester Allochthon, which is Upper Paleozoic in this area. The Sylvester Allochthon is a fault-bounded imbricate assemblage of Devonian to Triassic regionally metamorphosed (greenschist facies) oceanic rocks thrust over autochthonous North American sediments. In this area, the assemblage consists of Slide Mountain Complex greenstones, pillow metabasalts, serpentinite, listwanite and argillites. West-plunging veins occur on both limbs of a synclinal fold with an east-trending axis.
Locally, a rusty vein quartz occurs in two trench exposures in pyritized, carbonatized tuffs of the Pennsylvanian to Permian Slide Mountain Complex. Quartz in the west exposure reaches a width of 1.2 metres and contains inclusions of tuff. No sulphides are reported. Quartz in the exposure 12 metres to the east varies from 2.7 to 4.6 metres in width, with a well-defined hangingwall and gradational footwall. Rusty vein material from the east exposure assayed trace amounts of gold and silver. This occurrence possibly relates to the eastern extension of the Vollaug vein (MINFILE 104P 057).
Work History
The area has been explored in conjunction with the nearby Erickson (MINFILE 104P 029) and a complete regional exploration history can be found there.