2 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
Dr. Elliott Coues, in his report on the Ornithology of the 
Prybiloy,* near the middle of Behring’s Sea, and off the coast 
of Alaska, says that the Snow Bunting, or Snow-bird, is a per- 
manent resident on the islands, nesting high on the rocky broken 
uplands, and only entering the villages during unusually severe 
or protracted cold weather. ‘It builds an elegant nest of soft 
dry grass, and lines it warmly with a thick bed of feathers, placing 
it on the ground generally beneath some lava-slate, or at the foot 
of a boulder.” The eggs he describes as usually five in number. 
Professor Newton, in the article above quoted, has collected a 
great mass of evidence proving undoubtedly that the southern 
breeding range of the Snow Bunting extends as far south as the 
Grampians, old birds in summer, and the young in the autumn, 
having frequently been observed on some of the highest Ptarmigan 
hills in Scotland, and it is rather surprising that on the mainland 
the nest should have hitherto escaped detection. 
There is no doubt that a few pairs breed regularly in Shetland, 
and the late lamented Dr. Saxby, whose early death every reader 
of this journal must regret, states (‘ Birds of Shetland,’ p. 94) that 
twice he had the nest and eggs brought to him; once in July, 1861, 
found in a crevice of the rock near the top of one of the high 
sea-cliffs at Burrafirth, below the hill of Saxaford; and again, in 
1871, a man who used to collect for him brought, as a present, a 
Snow Bunting’s nest and four eggs, found amongst the stones of 
the demolished cairn at Saxaford the summer before. ‘These two, 
so far as Iam aware, are the only instances of the Snow Bunting’s 
nest being found in the British Isles. 
Northward of Great Britain it nests regularly in the Feroes, 
in Norway, on the northern islands of the coast, as well as on the 
high fells of the interior. In Iceland it is the commonest of the 
smaller birds, and in Spitsbergen, as Prof. Newton says, is the 
only Passerine bird which is ordinarily met with. Northward 
still it finds a congenial home on Kaiser Franz Joseph Land and 
on many a barren island in the ice-encumbered northern seas, and 
doubtless also on undiscovered lands nearer to the Pole, as yet 
untrodden by human footsteps. 
Considering the position in which the nest is placed, under 
some boulder or ledge of rock, it is not surprising that it should 
* “The Fauna of the Prybilov Islands,’ by Dr. Elliott Coues, ed. J. E. 
Harting, p. 17 (1875). 
