1666 U.S. NATIONAL MUSEUM BULLETIN 23 7 p aet 3 



Alaska for instance, A. M. Bailey (1948) notes of their arrival in 

 early April: "winter seems to have a firm grip upon the barren land 

 at this time, with frozen ground offering little in the way of food, but 

 the flocks of birds scatter throughout the native villages, securing a 

 precarious living where the winds have blown the snow clear." 

 They fare no better in Greenland, where Salomonsen notes the early 

 arrivals depend extensively on Eskimo villages and wind-blown snow 

 fields. 



Though the layman might assume conditions to be even more 

 severe at higher latitudes, the opposite is true. Lack of precipitation 

 makes the high arctic a desert with very little snow and the land is a 

 refuge for birds arriving in the early spring. The buntings move 

 among the grass tops exposed by the thin snow, gleaning an easy 

 food supply. On the coastal slopes of Ellesmere Island, MacDonald 

 and I noted thousands of bunting tracks leading from one grass tuft 

 to another. The newly arrived birds were obviously hungry, and 

 those near our camp fed ravenously at the banding traps for several 

 days before joining the flocks of those already fattened. 



Food in the early spring consists primarily of various seeds, espe- 

 cially of the grass Poa in the far north. In summer and fall the birds 

 eat a mixed diet of insects (mainly Coleoptera, Lepidoptera, Hemip- 

 tera, and Diptera), spiders, and seeds and buds. They feed their 

 nestlings and young fledglings animal food exclusively, so far as 

 known. Gabrielson (1924) found the summer food of a few buntings 

 collected near Hudson Bay and the Pribilof Islands to be one- third 

 animal (beetles, crane flies, spiders) and two-thirds vegetable (seeds 

 of grasses, sedges, smartweed). Martin, Zim, and Nelson (1951) list 

 bristlegrass, ragweed, pigweed, sandgrass, goosefoot, and oats as the 

 leading plant species in the diet, and "Fly larvae and pupae, particu- 

 larly of the cranefly, caterpillars, beetles, and true bugs constitute the 

 major portion of the animal diet. Crustaceans are also consumed, 

 particularly sand fleas." Nichols (in Pearson et al., 1936) reports 

 that they eat "locust" eggs in Nebraska. The winter food is primarily 

 grass and weed seeds, but Forbush (1929) notes that "along the coast 

 [it] takes tiny crustaceans and other small forms of marine life, 

 sometimes following the retreating waves or gleaning in pools like 

 sandpipers." 



Voice. — Witherby et al. characterize the male snow bunting's song 

 as: "short, but musical, bold and loud for size and with fair variety 

 of phrasing. Typical version might be rendered 'txiree-turee-iuree- 

 twiwee.' From rock or other low perch and on wing." Salomonsen 

 describes it as a "short rippling warble of distinct structure, but 

 rather varying, consisting of 9-14 syllables, repeated sometimes with 

 intervals of 5-10 seconds or delivered 3-4 times without pauses as 



