196 THE BUNTINGS 



like larks, they both can and are prepared to hop, whenever the 

 occasion may seem to require it." 



Snow-buntings appear annually, though in comparatively small 

 numbers, upon various favoured portions of our coast, and such 

 visits have had a very appreciative commemorator in the author 

 of Birds of the If umber District l already once quoted who 

 remarks as follows : " To the lover of birds, dwelling on the 

 east coast, there is no greater favourite than our 'snowflake,' 

 for it comes when summer birds are gone, in the darkness of 

 the declining year, enlivening the bleak coast, or marsh, with its 

 cheerful call, and making beautiful the dreary landscape by the 

 flicker of hundreds of white-patched wings ; so that, seen against the 

 dark background of a lowering sky which in itself causes the dark 

 portions of the plumage to become invisible it has exactly the 

 appearance of those large, feather-like and slowly-drifting flakes 

 which herald the approaching storm." The "call" here alluded to 

 is described by Macgillivray as "a soft and rather low cry, inter- 

 mixed, at times, with a sort of stifled scream." 2 The same writer 

 speaks of such flocks of "snowflakes" as "flying low along the shore, 

 somewhat in the manner of larks, moving in an undulating line, by 

 means of repeated flappings and short intervals of cessation," 3 an 

 account I know not whether it was from personal observation- 

 bearing no very striking resemblance to that of Seebohrn (which 

 certainly was), who compares the snow-bunting's flight to a butterfly's, 

 "as if the bird altered its mind every few seconds, as to which 

 direction it wished to take." 4 Just as, on the shores of the Humber, 

 the black parts of the birds disappeared against " the lowering sky," 

 so, in Siberia, where they were seen by the writer last quoted, the 

 white parts "were invisible against the white snow," 5 so that if the 

 same individuals could be in two countries or climates, at once, the 

 species might (and, no doubt, would) be claimed as a salient example 



1 J. Cordeaux. 2 History of British Birds. 3 Ibid. 



4 A History of British Birds. 6 Birds of Siberia, etc. ; Field, 1874, July 25. 



