SNOW BUNTING. I2/ 



chirp, and displaying their beautiful variegated plumage, 

 then wheeling suddenly round before they alight. As 

 we examine them through a field-glass, the plumage of 

 no two seems quite the same. Some retain much of 

 the summer dress of virgin white ; others display the 

 brownish colour, which has given the bird its name of 

 the Tawny Bunting, whilst the remainder seem midway 

 between the two ; in all cases, however, the white mark- 

 ings on the tail and wings are very conspicuous. 



Their flight has been compared to that of a butterfly, 

 and I think justly ; but in some respects it resembles 

 that of the Yellow-hammer, and their call-note is not 

 unlike his, but in a gayer and more twittering strain ; I 

 have no doubt that by many they are taken for flocks of 

 Chaffinches, as are probably the Bramblings also when 

 they sometimes appear on our roads in winter. Mr. 

 Macgillivray saw both old and young birds together on 

 the Grampian Hills in August, 1830. He saw a male 

 on Ben Mucdhui, the second highest mountain in Scot- 

 land, on the 4th of that month ; it may probably, there- 

 fore, breed in some of these elevated and little-frequented 

 districts. Captain Feilden found a Snow Bunting's nest 

 in Grinnell Land, 82 33' N., containing four eggs, and 

 lined with the feathers of a Snowy Owl, whose nest was 

 not twenty feet away. And Linnaeus tells us that it is 

 the only living animal that has been seen 2,000 feet 

 above the line of perpetual snow in the Lapland Alps. 



Mr. Ussher remarks that the hardiness of this bird 

 was illustrated in January, 1886, when twenty never left 

 the Black Rock, Mayo, during nine days that the spray 

 was flying over the rock. 



The eggs are said to be reddish-white, with brownish 

 spots. 



