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 dongspur (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 Ball 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. 



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