280 NOTES ON NEW ENGLAND BIRDS 



I was surprised to see fly up from the white, stony 

 road, two snow buntings, which alighted again close 

 by, one on a large rock, the other on the stony ground. 

 They had pale-brown or tawny touches, on the white 

 breast, on each side of the head, and on the top of the 

 head, in the last place with some darker color. Had 

 light-yellowish bills. They sat quite motionless within 

 two rods, and allowed me to approach within a rod, as 

 if conscious that the white rocks, etc., concealed them. 

 It seemed as if they were attracted to surfaces of the 

 same color with themselves, — white and black (or quite 

 dark) and tawny. One squatted ^a<, if not both. Their 

 soft rippling notes as they went off reminded me of the 

 northeast snow-storms to which ere long they are to be 

 an accompaniment. 



Dec. 12, 1858. P. M. — Up river on ice to Fair Haven 

 Hill. 



Crossing the fields west of our Texas ' house, I see an 

 immense flock of snow buntings, I think the largest that 

 I ever saw. There must be a thousand or two at least. 

 There is but three inches, at most, of crusted and dry 

 frozen snow, and they are running amid the weeds which 

 rise above it. The weeds are chiefly Juncus tenuis (?), 

 but its seeds are apparently gone. I find, however, the 

 glumes of the piper grass 2 scattered about where they 

 have been. The flock is at first about equally divided 

 into two parts about twenty rods apart, but birds are 



1 [" Texas " was a part of Concord where the Thoreau family lived 

 from 1844 to 1850.] 



2 [A local name for the conch, quitch, or witch grass (Agropyron 

 Ttpens). See Walden, Riverside Literature Series, Notes, p. 391.] 



