The Audubon Societies 53 



FOR TEACHERS AND PUPILS 



Exercise VII : Birds" Map of America, Concluded 



Correlated Studies : Geography. Spelling and Elementary Agriculture 



In re^•ie^\•in<^ l)riefly the two preceding exercises, let us take the Snowflake, 

 or Snow Bunting, as our guide, and try to picture some of its extensixe jour- 

 neyings o\-er a x'ast part of the northern hemisphere quite unknown to us. 



Striking in appearance, first, because it is the only member of the Sparrow 

 family [Fringilllda?] with a conspicuous amount of white in its plumage, and, 

 second, because the males and females and young differ not only in color and 

 markings, but also with the changing seasons, as the frontispiece shows, the 

 "White Snowbird" is known in the Alleghanian fauna only as a winter visitor, 

 in the Canadian and most of the Hudsonian faunas as a migrant and winter 

 resident, and in the Alaskan-Arctic and Barren Ground faunas as a summer 

 resident. 



The Snowllake is found in the northern part oi both hemispheres, a fact 

 worthy of note, which may be expressed in one long but descriptive phrase, 

 circnm polar in distribution. A harbinger of cold and stormy weather in tem- 

 perate latitudes, this little Bunting finds its summer home and nesting-site as 

 far north as human beings have ever made their way. Take 83° north latitude 

 and trace its course around the Pole, if you would discover the extreme limits 

 of the summer haunts of this hardy bird. In northern Greenland, frigid 

 Si)itzbergen probably, and, indeed, throughout most of the land areas south to 

 the Arctic Circle, its mossy nest may be found. The most southerly breeding- 

 place of the Snowflake known in 1874 was on Southampton Island, where 

 Captain Lyons chanced to see a nest on the grave of an Esquimaux child. 

 By reading the log-books of polar explorers, you may obtain more recent 

 records of the occurrence of this feathered traveler. In North America, the 

 genus of Snow Buntings is represented by two subspecies and one species. 

 The Snow Bunting which \-isits the United States is the most widely distributed 

 of these, for the Pribilof Snow Bunting is restricted to the Siberian Coast of 

 Bering Sea and the Aleutian, Shumagin, Pribilof and Commander Islands, 

 while McKay's Snow Bunting is a summer resident on Hall and St. Matthew 

 Islands, migrating in winter only as far as the mainland of western Alaska. 



The Snow Bunting but rarely visits latitudes south of the Alleghanian 

 fauna, and then only in seasons of severe cold and storms. It has been known 

 to stray as far south as Florida and the Bermudas; but such wanderings from 

 its normal range are accidental, for these places are in the warm temperate part 

 of North America, and are seldom, if ever, frequeiited by species of the far north. 



Leaving now the Arctic and cold temperate belts, and also the north warm 

 temperate or so-called Transition (Alleghanian) belt, we come to the highly 

 diversified faunas of the middle and south warm temperate parts of our con- 

 tinent. The line which we have already noticed divides the humid East from 



