Conspicuously Black and White 
It is generally seen in the underbrush, picking about among the 
dead leaves for its steady diet of earthworms and larve of in- 
sects, occasionally regaling itself with a few dropping berries 
and fruit. 
When startled, the bird rises not more than ten or twelve 
feet from the earth, and utters its characteristic calls. On ac- 
count of this habit of flying low and grubbing among the leaves, 
it is sometimes called the ground robin. In the South our modest 
and useful little food-gatherer is often called grasel, especially in 
Louisiana, where it is white-eyed, and is much esteemed, alas! 
by epicures. 
Snowflake 
(Plectropbenax nivalis) Finch family 
Called also: SNOW BUNTING; WHITEBIRD; SNOWBIRD; 
SNOW LARK 
Length—j7 to 7.5 inches. About one-fourth smaller than the robin. 
Male and Female—Head, neck, and beneath soiled white, with a 
few reddish-brown feathers on top of head, and suggesting an 
imperfect collar. Above, grayish brown obsoletely streaked 
with black, the markings being most conspicuous in a band 
between shoulders. Lower tail feathers black; others, white 
and all edged with white. Wings brown, white, and gray. 
Plumage unusually variable. In summer dress (in arctic 
regions) the bird is almost white. 
Range—Circumpolar regions to Kentucky (in winter only). 
Migrations—Midwinter visitor; rarely, if ever, resident south of 
arctic regions. 
These snowflakes (mentioned collectively, for it is impossible 
to think of the bird except in great flocks) are the ‘‘ true spirits of 
the snowstorm,” says Thoreau. They are animated beings that 
ride upon it, and have their life in it. By comparison with the 
climate of the arctic regions, no doubt our hardiest winter weather 
seems luxuriously mild to them. We associate them only with 
those wonderful midwinter days when sky, fields, and woods 
alike are white, and a ‘‘hard, duil bitterness of cold” drives 
every other bird and beast to shelter. It is said they often pass 
the night buried beneath the snow. They have been seen to dive 
beneath it to escape a hawk. 
Whirling about in the drifting snow to catch the seeds on 
59 
