132 BRITISH BIRDS. 
South Russia and is only a straggler to Turkestan. The Lapland Bunting 
has been met with as far south as New Mexico, on the American continent, 
where it has several allies, from all of which it may easily be distinguished 
by its black throat. 
The Lapland Bunting does not belong to the class of gipsy migrants like 
the Snow-Bunting, but appears to have a distinct winter home and to be 
comparatively regular in its migrations. It 1s, perhaps, the commonest 
bird on the tundras. It is described as being extremely abundant in 
Arctic America, from Alaska to Greenland. East of the North Cape 
I found it very common in Lapland. Both at Ust Zylma on the Petchora 
and at Koorayika on the Yenesay an almost endless succession of flocks 
passed northwards on migration; and on both sides of the Ural Mountains, 
when we reached the tundra, we found it to be not only the commonest but 
also the most widely distributed bird. The migrations of the Lapland 
Bunting are, however, somewhat peculiar. Like the Petchora Pipit and 
the Arctic Willow-Warbler, its winter home hes in the far east. Its 
oceurrence in Central and Southern Europe during winter appears to be 
only accidental. Individuals wander westward—birds who have joined 
the wrong stream of migration, and lost their way; but the main flocks 
migrate eastwards, crossing the Ural Mountains north of the valley of 
the Kama, and, following their eastern slopes, cross the steppes to the 
Altai Mountains, and find their way to Eastern Mongolia and North 
China, where Prjevalsky and Swinhoe found them wintering in great 
numbers. The East-Siberian birds probably winter in the same district. 
Dybowsky states that they pass Lake Baikal on the spring migration 
during the second half of April, and in autumn during the first half of 
September. 
The Lapland Bunting is quite as much a bird of the tundra as the Snow- 
Bunting, and, like that species, is only known to breed beyond or above 
the limit of forest-growth. In many other of its habits it also resembles 
the Snow-Bunting, and is equally gregarious, but does not breed quite so 
far north. It is also much later in arriving at its breeding-grounds. In 
the valley of the Petchora we did not meet with it at Ust Zylma, in lat. 66°, 
until the 18th of May; and in the valley of the Yenesay, on the Koorayika 
in lat. 663°, a solitary Lapland Bunting appeared for the first time on ihe 
4th of June—in each case at least six weeks after the arrival of the Snow- 
Bunting. In both cases I had an excellent opportunity of watching their 
habits. The first birds to arrive were males, principally in company with 
Shore-Larks ; they passed through on migration for about a fortnight 
the later flocks being almost entirely composed of females. They re 
to be entirely ground-feeders, and ran about very actively wherever there 
was any bare ground; but before the snow had entirely disappeared the 
Lapland Buntings had also taken their departure, and we did not meet with 
