5 D 



.8 



PERCMIXG BIRDS 



backwards from the beak, and a second from the lower half of the beak 

 to the breast are black ; with the exception that the chestnut collar is 

 smaller and less bright, and the whole tone of the plumaj^e duller, the 

 rest of the colouring is like that of the cocks. Young birds are still 



duller and darker, with 

 spots of darker brown 

 on the pale brown of 

 the under-parts. 



The distribution of 

 this circum polar species 

 is very similar to that of 

 the snow-bunting ; but 

 to Great Britain this 

 bunting is only a casual 

 autumn and winter 

 visitor, almost unknown 

 in Scotland and the Isles, 

 although a specimen 

 was recorded from the 

 Mannan Islands in the 

 Outer Hebrides in 

 1904. In Ireland it 

 No instance of its nesting in the 



LAPLAND HUNTING. 



appears to be altogether unknown. 

 United Kingdom has been recorded. 



Of the white-throated bunting, or white-throated sparrow {Zof/otnc/iia 

 albicollis), three stragglers to Great Britain were recorded during the 

 nineteenth century, namely, one near Aberdeen in 1867, a second 

 near Brighton in 1872, and a third in the vicinity of Hull in 1893. 



Chaffinch 

 (Fringilla coelebs). 



With the familiar chaffinch, which derives its name 

 of ccclebs (bachelor) from the fact of the cocks col- 

 lecting in large flocks during the winter, we come to 

 the first representative of the typical finches and sparrows, collectively 

 constituting the subfamily Fringillina:. From the preceding sub- 

 family (hlmberizinnj) they are distinguished by the much less marked 

 angle formed by the inferior border of the lower half of the beak, and 

 likewise by the fact that, when closed, the two halves of the beak are 

 in contact by their edges throughout their entire length. Abundant 

 in the northern half of the Old World, finches and sparrows are poorly 

 represented in India, Burma, and Africa, and are wanting in Oceania 

 and Australasia; on the other hand they arc numerous in South America 



