THE SNOW BUNTING. 499 
were evidently stragglers, driven there by accidental circumstances. 
They abound on the northern shores of the Mediterranean, in Western 
Central Asia, in France, and as far north as Norway, where they are 
known to breed. Their favourite resorts, according to Meyer, are the 
borders of woods, hedges, and fields, near a water-course clothed 
with low willows and bushes. Although very shy, still great num- 
bers are captured in nets, when they are kept in confinement, and 
crammed for the table. 
The Snow Bunting (Plectrophanes nivalis) rarely shows itself in 
Fig. 217 —The Ortolan Bunting, 
France ; and Montagu describes them as being rare in England ; but 
McGillivray found them in considerable flocks all over Scotland, 
from the Outer Hebrides to the Lothians. On the 4th of August,1830, 
being on the summit of Ben-na-muic-dhu, one of the loftiest moun- 
tains in Scotland, he observed a beautiful ‘male flitting about in the 
neighbourhood of a drift cf snow, and some days after, in descending 
from Lochnagar on a botanising expedition, he noticed a flock of 
eight individuals flying about among the granite rocks of a corry, 
evidently a family. “It is, therefore,” he thinks, ‘‘ very probable 
that it breeds on the higher Grampians.’ 
