272 



SNOW BIRD. 



the neck, pale ash ; bill, in winter, black ; in summer, the 

 lower mandible flesh coloured ; rump, dark ash ; belly and 

 vent, white ; back, variegated with black and bright bay ; 

 wings, black, broadly edged with bright chestnut ; tail, dusky, 

 forked, and slightly edged with pale ochre ; legs and feet, a 

 pale flesh colour. The female differs in having less black on 

 the frontlet, and the bay duller. Both lose the black front in 

 moulting;. 



SNOW BIRD. {Fringilla Hudsonia.)* 



PLATE XVI.— Fig. 6. 



Fringilla Hudsonia, Turton, Syst. i. 568. — Emberiza hyemalis, Id. 531. — Lath. i. 

 66. — Catesb. i. 36. — Arct. Zool. p. 359, No. 223. — Passer nivalis, Bartram, p. 

 291. — Peale's Museum, No. 6532. 



FRINGILLA HYEMALIS.— Lwnjevs. 



Fringilla hyemalis, Bonap. Syno}). p. 109. — North. Zool. ii. p. 259.— The Snow 

 Bird, Aud. pi. 13, Orn. Biog. i. p. 72. 



This well-known species, small and insignificant as it may 

 appear, is by far the most numerous, as well as the most 

 extensively disseminated, of all the feathered tribes that visit 

 us from the frozen regions of the north, — their migrations 

 extending from the arctic circle, and probably beyond it, to 

 the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, spreading over the whole 

 breadth of the United States, from the Atlantic Ocean to 

 Louisiana ; how much farther westward, I am unable to say. 

 About the 20th of October, they make their first appearance 

 in those parts of Pennsylvania east of the Alleghany Moun- 

 tains. At first they are most generally seen on the borders 

 of woods among the falling and decayed leaves, in loose flocks 

 of thirty or forty together, always taking to the trees when 

 disturbed. As the weather sets in colder, they approach nearer 

 the farmhouse and villages ; and on the appearance of what 



* Nivalis of first edition. 



