1678 U.S. NATIONAL MUSEUM BULLETIN 237 part 3 



flies as they flitted about over the landscape going about their various 

 businesses, feeding themselves or their young, or singing at least a 

 part of their song. Young of all sizes, from bobtailed ones that were 

 still uncertain of the distance or direction of their flight to those that 

 could fly as well as their parents, were scattered over the islands. 

 On both my 1940 and 1946 visits the gray youngsters were much more 

 abundant than the whiter adults; the fuzzy grayness of their plumage 

 and the indistinct breast streaks easily distinguished them from their 

 parents. 



The first known specimens of McKay's bunting were taken at 

 Nulato and St. Michael in April 1879 by E. W. Nelson (1887). His 

 notes recorded at the time that they were odd birds, but although he 

 commented on their differences from the more common P. nivalis, 

 he did not suspect that they represented a new species. These 

 specimens, and others that Charles L. McKay took at Nushagak 

 Nov. 16 and Dec. 10, 1882, were the basis for Ridgway's (1885) 

 description of the species. Its breeding ground was discovered by 

 Charles H. Townsend (1887), the first ornithologist to visit Hall 

 Island, when he collected adults and juveniles there Sept. 8, 1885. 



John Burroughs et al. (1901) wrote of his visit to Hall Island with 

 the Harriman Alaska Expedition in 1899: 



After we had taken our fill of gazing upon the murres came the ramble 

 away from the cliffs in the long twilight through that mossy and flowery 

 solitude. Such patterns and suggestions for rugs and carpets as we walked over 

 for hours ; such a blending of grays, drabs, browns, greens, and all delicate neutral 

 tints, all dashed with masses of many-colored flowers, it had never before been 

 my fortune to witness, much less to walk upon. Drifting over this marvelous 

 carpet or dropping down upon it from the air above was the hyperborean snowbird, 

 white as a snowflake and with a song of great sweetness and power. With lifted 

 wings, the bird would drop through the air to the earth pouring out its joyous 

 ecstatic strain. 



Charles Keeler (1901), another member of the expedition who wrote 

 a running account of the birds seen, described the visit to Hall Island 

 as follows: 



Upon climbing up the slopes from the shore, we found ourselves upon an Arctic 

 tundra — a great rolling plateau of bog, with pools of water in every hollow, and 

 flowers growing in bewildering profusion. A bed of moss spread across the island 

 from cliff to cliff carpeting everything with its soft tones of gray, brown, purple, 

 and green — parts of it like velvet, soft and yielding to the tread, and other parts 

 spongy and soggy. The masses of flowers wove richly flowing patterns into the 

 carpet, in purple, blue, yellow, and white — the purple primrose and pedicularis 

 the blue polemonium, the yellow poppy, a fine golden cowslip, and the white 

 cupped dryas. 



It was fitting that this fairy garden in the midst of a stormy sea should be 

 inhabited by one of the most chastely adorned of birds, the hyperborean snow- 

 flake. Verily a snowflake this exquisite creature is, as it whirls through the 

 mystic glow of night among the wastes of flowers. Its plumage is as candid as a 

 freshly opened lily. The spotless white shows more perfectly by contrast with 



