THE ALASKAN LONGSPUR 
BY EDWARD W. NELSON 
The Lapland longspur is a circumpolar bird, whose presence has 
been recorded in summer from many points visited by explorers in 
the treeless Arctic regions. It nests in Iceland, Greenland, and on a 
majority of the islands of the icy sea north to 73 degrees of latitude, 
as well as on the mainland. Owing probably to some climatic in¬ 
fluence, the longspurs which breed west of the Mackenzie River, and 
throughout Alaska, as well as on the Aleutian and other islands of 
Bering Sea, are paler than those from the rest of the great range of 
this species, and have been distinguished as a geographic subspecies 
called the Alaska longspur {Calcarius lapponicus alascensis). These 
longspurs, however, are so nearly alike in appearance and habits 
throughout their range that in the present sketch they have been 
treated as one. In Alaska, they are extremely abundant and familiar 
birds on virtually all of the treeless tundras or Arctic barrens. They 
are perhaps most numerous on the mainland everywhere in suitable 
places, but are also common on the islands of Bering Sea. They are 
known in these northern haunts only in summer, when they breed 
from Kadiak Island north to Point Barrow. 
The males reach Dawson, on the upper Yukon, from the 5th to 
18th of April, in nearly perfect breeding-plumage. There appears to 
be no spring molt of these birds, but they obtain the breeding-dress 
by the wearing away of the light edgings of the feathers of the 
winter plumage. At the same time remaining parts of the feathers 
appear to become brighter and richer, as if suffused with added 
coloring-matter. There is considerable individual variation in color, 
due to a greater or less intensity rather than to any change in pattern. 
During the last days of April and first of May, they arrive at St. 
Michael, on the coast of Bering Sea, and are known to reach southern 
Greenland at about the same time. Murdoch tells us that they are 
abundant in summer at Point Barrow, where they arrive about May 
20; the first eggs are laid early in June, and the birds begin to 
migrate southward the last of August or first of September. On the 
western Aleutian Islands Dali found them to be abundant summer 
residents, and discovered a nest with four much-incubated eggs on 
June 18. They leave these islands in winter; and I may add that I do 
not know of a winter record from any part of Alaska. 
68 
