126 BRITISH BIRDS. 
rare, winter visitor to Italy. It is not known to have occurred in Turkey, 
Greece, or Asia Minor, but occasionally wanders as far as South Russia. 
It does not appear to visit Persia, but Severtzow records it as a rare winter 
visitor to North-west Turkestan. On the American continent it has been 
known to wander as far south as Georgia. It has no very near ally. 
Of all the Arctic birds which visit the British Islands in winter the Snow- 
Bunting is perhaps the favourite. The brilliant contrast between his 
snow-white head and breast and deep black back, and the similar contrast 
on his wings and tail, cause the male in full breeding-plumage to be the 
most conspicuous of all small birds. No bird goes further north than the 
Snow-Bunting to breed. Capt. Feilden found a nest in Grinnell Land in 
lat. 82° 33’; it contained four eggs on the 24th of June, and was built 
within twenty feet of the nest of a Snowy Owl, with some of whose feathers 
it was lined. Further south it breeds much earlier., It is the earliest spring 
migrant. Early in April Harvie-Brown and I found them common enough 
at Mezen in lat. 66°, and by the end of May the last Snow-Bunting had 
left Ust Zylma in the same latitude on the Petchora. In the valley of the 
Yenesay they were somewhat later, the last flock passing the Koorayika, in 
lat. 664°, on the 7th of June. In the former valley we saw no signs of 
their breeding until we reached lat. 68°, and in the latter I did not meet 
with them again until I reached lat. 714°. When Collett and I went to 
Lapland in 1874 we did not meet with the Snow-Bunting until we reached 
Vads6, in the Varanger Fjord, about lat. 70°. On the 27th of June we 
found a nest with young, perhaps a week old. In Iceland, where it is 
said that many Snow-Buntings remain throughout the winter, it breeds 
much earlier, for Kriiper found well-incubated eggs on the 25th of May. 
I have a clutch of eggs in my collection obtained by Middendorff on the 
Taimur peninsula (about lat. 734°) on the 15th July 1843; they were 
laid by birds whose first nest, completed about the middle of June, had 
been destroyed by the flood when the ice on the river broke up. 
The Snow-Bunting seeks the wildest districts and the roughest ground 
in which to rear its young. High up on the rocky fells, far beyond the 
pines and above the birches and willows, among the loose stones and 
fallen crags, where the snow still lies in large patches, or away to the 
north on the wild tundra, not above but beyond the limit of forest-growth, 
surrounded by rivers and swamps and lakes and bogs, amongst the piles 
of drift-wood that strew the banks of the mighty rivers, or the half-rotten 
logs which lie above high-water mark on the shores of the Arctic ocean, 
left there ages ago, when the sea-level was much higher than it is now, 
are the breeding-places of this bird. Perhaps it is the comparatively even 
temperature enjoyed in summer, where the sun never sets, that tempts the 
Snow-Bunting into these wild regions, or it may be the abundance of 
food, the clouds of musquitoes, and the unlimited supply of ground-fruit, 
