The Migration of North American Sparrows 



TWENTIETH PAPER 



Compiled by Prolessor W. W. Cooke, Chiefly from Data in the Biological Survey 



With drawings by Louis Agassiz Fuertes 



(See Frontispiece) 



SNOW BUNTING 



The records of the Snow Bunting take us to the extreme north. The first 

 party of white men who ever wintered on the Arctic islands, in their searcb 

 for the Northwest Passage, noted the arrival of the Bunting, May 15, 1820, 

 at Melville Island, latitude 75°. This was later than the average, for the party 

 that spent three years on Boothia Felix, latitude 70°, saw them on April 17 

 of both 1830 and 1831. The various expeditions of the Franklin search, 1850- 

 1854, record the bird's arrival, on the average, April 17 at latitude 73°, with the 

 earliest April 10, 1854, at Camden Bay, latitude 70°. The British expedition 

 of 1875, which wintered on the most northern land of this continent, saw the 

 first Bunting May 13, 1876, at Floeberg Beach, latitude 82°35'; and the ill- 

 fated Greely party, a hundred miles farther south, recorded its arrival at 

 Fort Conger, April 14, 1882, and April 24, 1883. Even when they had retreated 

 two hundred miles and were starving at Cape Sabine, they still kept up their 

 bird notes, and report the arrival of the Bunting, April 13, 1884. A straggler 

 appeared March 14, 1872, at Dr. Kane's winter quarters in Thank God Har- 

 bor, latitude 82°. Some other dates of spring arrival are: Fort Churchill, 

 Keewatin, March 24, 1886; Carlton House, Saskatchewan, March 29, 1827; 

 Fort Chipewyan, Alberta, average March 29, earliest March 22, 1885; Fort 

 Simpson, Mackenzie, average March 26, earliest March 4, 1905; Forty-mile, 

 Yukon, March 30, 1898; Kotzebue Sound, Alaska, April 19, 1899; Point Bar- 

 row, Alaska, average April 14, earliest April 9, 1882; northern Mackenzie, 

 average April 20, earliest April 14, 1864. 



SPRING MIGRATION 



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