BIRDS OF THE CAMBRIDGE REGION. 265 



151. Passerina nivalis (Linn.). 

 Snowflake. Snow Bunting. 



Winter visitor, formerly abundant at times, still not uncommon. 



SEASONAL OCCURRENCE. 



October 24, 1897, flock of three or four seen, Arlington, W. Fa.xon. 



November i — March 15. 

 March 25, 1876, one seen, Watertown, W. Brewster. 



Snowflakes continue to occur abundantly in spring and autumn, and very 

 commonly in winter, also, at many places on the seacoast of Massachusetts, but 

 their visits to the Cambridge Region have become, of late, comparatively irreg- 

 ular and infrequent. In the frosty mornings of late autumn we still hear the 

 clear flight calls of birds passing high overhead, or in winter see flocks whirling 

 over the deserted fields like gusts of veritable snoivflakes, but such experiences 

 happen much less often now than they did twenty-five or thirty years ago. 

 Up to about 1875 a winter seldom or never passed when Snow Buntings, as 

 we always called them in those days, were not observed in or immediately about 

 Cambridge, and they were often so numerous and familiar as to attract very 

 general attention. They paid occasional visits to the weed patches in our garden, 

 and I have repeatedly seen them, scattered, in small flocks, all the way from Mount 

 Auburn to Boston, along Brattle Street and Main Street (now Massachusetts 

 Avenue), feeding on horse droppings between the tracks of the street railway. 

 At almost any time betweerr December and March one was almost sure of finding 

 them in the marshes or about the gravelly flats bordering Charles River between 

 West Boston Bridge and Watertown. When their favorite haunts along the 

 seacoast became deeply and uniformly covered by snow, they were sometimes 

 driven inland in immense numbers. A notable instance of this happened in 

 January, 1871. There had been a heavy snow-fall on the 29th of this month, 

 and during the following day the whole region immediately about Cambridge 

 was literally flooded with hungry Snow Buntings flying restlessly from place to 

 place in eager, tireless quest for food. I especially remember a flock which I 

 found feeding among some tall weeds in a neglected field not far from the Water- 

 town Arsenal. My notes state that there were " at least a thousand birds" and 

 that when I shot at them " they rose in a dense cloud and alighted in the tops of 

 some neighboring oaks, clustering thickly over the ends of the branches. When 



