Snowflake WESTERN BIRDS 



GENUS PLECTEOPHENAX: SNOW- 

 FLAKE. 



Snowflake: Plectrophenax nivalis nivalis. 

 FAMILY— FINCHES, SPARROWS, ETC. 



The little Snowflake, or Snow Bunting, is a bird 

 unique in plumage. In this large family we have listed 

 some of our brightest-plumaged birds, such as the Car- 

 dinal, Goldfinch, and Indigo bird, as well as many that 

 are among the dullest so far as coloring goes; but in 

 the Snowflake we have a bird with so much white in his 

 make-up as to make his name quite appropriate. These 

 birds live in Alaska and the far north, where they build 

 their nests on the ground and rear their young, but 

 when the weather becomes too severe they come down 

 into northern United States, and along the Pacific Coast 

 as far as Oregon. When the thermometer has dropped 

 way down, perhaps reaching forty degrees below zero, and 

 a raging blizzard is making the out of doors unbearable 

 to most living things, then come the Snowflakes in im- 

 mense flocks, bounding in their undulating flight through 

 the air, those in the rear, rising and flying over and in 

 front of the others, until they do, indeed, look like flakes 

 of snow driven before the fury of the gale. But this 

 cold is their delight. Never need we expect to see them 

 in mild weather. Sometimes the rare Lapland Longspur 

 is with them; that bird that is also a dweller of the far 

 north; sometimes, too, we find Horned-larks foraging 

 with them in pursuit of such seeds as the snow-laden 

 ground will yield. 



In their summer plumage we are told that they are 

 white with black back and some other markings, but 

 when they come to us the black has been replaced by a 

 rusty brown which shows on crown and back, with some 



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