CHAPTER EIGHT BIRDS ^ REPTILES 



it for some hours in pursuit of the small birds, and I found 

 lying about the walls two or three chaffinches, which had 

 been killed and partly eaten, in a style unlike the perform- 

 ance of any bird of prey that I am acquainted with; so much 

 so, indeed, that before I saw the butcher-bird, my atten- 

 tion was called to their dead bodies by the curious manner 

 in which they seemed to have been pulled to pieces. Hav- 

 ing watched the bird for a short time as he sat perched on 

 an apple-tree very near me, I went in for my gun, but did 

 not see him again. 



The tawny buntingand the snow-bunting visit us in large 

 flocks, especially the latter, which birds remain here during 

 the whole winter, appearing in greater or lesser flocks ac- 

 cording to the temperature. In severe weather the fields 

 nearthesea-shore,andtheshoreitself,aresometimesnearly 

 covered by them. When the snow-buntings first arrive, in 

 October and November, they are of a much darker colour 

 than they are afterwards as the winter advances. If there is 

 much snow, they put on a white plumage immediately. I do 

 not know how this change of colour is effected, but it is very 

 visible,and appears to depend entirely on the severity of the 

 season.* They feed a great deal on the shore. When flying 



*This is one of very few instances where St John's observation was at fault. The snow- 

 bunting {Pkctrophenax nivalis) is, as he states, a winter migrant to the British Isles; 

 but its dress is then dariertha.n in summer owing to the rufous edges of the feathers con- 

 cealing the white plumage underneath. In spring these brown margins wear off, leaving 

 the bird much more conspicuously white, an interesting provision for its protective col- 

 oration while nesting in the arctic regions to which it repairs for that purpose. Infrequent 

 instances have been recorded of the snow-bunting remaining to breed in Sutherland, 

 Banffshire, the Shetland i slands, etc. ; but the main flocks migrate in spring to the far 

 north. (See /ie Vertebrate Fauna of Sutherland and Caithness, liy Ilarvie Brown and 

 Buckley, p. 138, for a description of nest and young found in 1SS6 on a hill in Suther- 

 land.)— Ed. 



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