THE SNOWFLAKE OR SNOW BUNTING 



United States, irregularly to northern California, 

 Colorado, Kansas, southern Indiana and Ohio, and 

 Florida. 



SNOW BUNTINGS, or "Brown Snowbirds" as they are 

 called to distinguish them from the juncos, or "Gray 

 Snowbirds," are not generally known because of the infre- 

 quency and irregularity of their visits. They belong to 

 the Sparrow family, but have so much black and white on 

 their wings and tail as to appear very unlike their rela- 

 tives. 



Snowflakes are gentle, fearless little birds, possibly be- 

 cause they come from the sparsely settled regions of the 

 North, where they need not learn to fear human beings. 

 Like chickadees, they appear to love driving storms, and to 

 frolic during February blizzards with as keen delight as 

 warmly clad children; like tree sparrows, they are pro- 

 tected by a layer of fat that keeps out the cold. As they, 

 too, are seed-eaters, snow buntings must journey southward 

 during the winter to regions where deep snows do not bury 

 the weeds. 



Few people are aware that in the treeless plains of the 

 north there lives a bird that resembles the much-admired 

 skylark of England in its way of singing. Both snow 

 buntings and skylarks begin to sing as they rise from the 

 ground, sing while on the wing or high up in the air, then 

 drop swiftly to the ground. 



Dr. Judd writes as follows about the snowbird: "The 

 snowflake is a bird of the arctic tundra, above the limit of 

 tree growth. In North America it breeds about Hudson 

 Bay, in the northermost parts of Labrador and Alaska, and 

 to the northward. In its northern home it is a white, 

 black-blotched sparrow, of whose habits very little is 



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