48 BIRDS OF THE HUMBER DISTRICT. 



the middle of October to the end of November. The 

 earliest I have seen them was at Spurn on the llth 

 of October. They leave us again about the end of 

 February or early in March, some few remaining as 

 late as the middle of that month ; and in 1872 I ob- 

 served five on the Humber embankment on the 25th. 

 The little Snow-flake will find food and thrive in the 

 severest winters, after all our small feathered friends 

 have been driven by frost and snow from the cold 

 and exposed marshes, feeding on the seeds of various 

 grasses picked from the withered bents rising above 

 the carpet of snow. They are nearly always exces- 

 sively fat. The stomachs of some Snow-Buntings 

 from the Great Cotes marshes in the winter of 1871 

 (as Mr. Peter Inchbald was kind enough to inform 

 me) contained almost exclusively the seeds of Scho- 

 beria maritima, one of the Chenopodiacese, a native 

 of the sandy tracks near Spurn Point. Roosts ge- 

 nerally amongst rough grass on the pastures. 



81. EMBERIZA MILIARIA, Linnaeus. Common 



Bunting. 



Provincial. Corn-Bunting. 



A resident throughout the year, but is far more 

 common in our east coast marshes during the autumn 

 and winter (when it is gregarious) than at any other 

 season*. I have observed that pied and light varieties 



* Mr. Saxby remarks, in the 'Zoologist,' that Common Bun- 

 tings arrive in large flocks in Shetland during the autumn, and 

 leave again in the spring. 



