WILD LIFE OF ORCHARD AND FIELD 



Northwest, but they intergrade confusingly, and 

 their nidification is essentially the same. A snow- 

 bird is a snow-bird from one end of the country to 

 the other, and the sharp, metallic note is charac- 

 teristic of the whole genus. 



Truer spirits of the driving snow — for the junco 

 is a sort of fair-weather bird, after all — are the 

 snow - buntings, or snow - flakes, or white snow- 

 birds, or, absurdest of all, winter - geese, as the 

 Nahant fishermen call them. Their systematic 

 name is Plectrophanes nivalis, and their plumage 

 is handsomely marked with white and chocolate- 

 brown. Sometimes a flock of these buntings will 

 whirl into our door-yard for a brief moment; but 

 in general you must go to the upland fields and 

 frozen marshes to find them, and the best time 

 is just after a ''cold snap" or a heavy snow. The 

 Hackensack meadows are sometimes full of them, 

 and I have seen flocks of hundreds pirouetting over 

 the ice-covered, wind-swept shores of Lake Erie, 

 or whirling down the bleak sands of Cape Cod. 

 What attracted them to such exposed and dreary 

 spots I could never divine. When they first come 

 they seem unsuspicious of any special danger 

 from man, yet are continually skurrying away 

 from some imaginary cause of alarm. Never 



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