238 NORTHERN ZOOLOGY. 



by Mr. Drummond, and by myself the same season at Great Bear Lake, in 

 latitude 65°. Specimens, procured at the former place, and transmitted to 

 England by the servants of the Hudson's Bay Company, were communicated, 

 by Mr. Leadbeater, to the Prince of Musignano, who has introduced the species 

 into his great work on the birds of the United States. In its autumn migration 

 southwards this bird must cross the territory of the United States, if it does not 

 actually winter within it ; but I have not heard of its having been hitherto seen 

 in America to the southward of the fifty-fifth parallel of latitude. The moun- 

 tainous nature of the country skirting the Northern Pacific Ocean being con- 

 genial to the habits of this species, it is probably more generally diffused in 

 New Caledonia and the Russian American territories, than to the eastward of 

 the Rocky Mountain chain. It appears in flocks at Great Bear Lake* about 

 the 24th of May, when the spring thaw has exposed the berries of the alpine 

 arbutus, marsh vaccinium, &c, that have been frozen and covered during winter. 

 It stays only for a few days, and none of the Indians of that quarter with whom 

 I conversed had seen its nests ; but I have reason to believe that it retires in 

 the breeding season to the rugged and secluded mountain-limestone districts, 

 in the sixty-seventh and sixty-eighth parallels, when it feeds on the fruit of the 

 ommon juniper, which abounds in these places. 



DESCRIPTION 

 Of a male, killed at Great Bear Lake on the 24th May, 1826. 

 Colour. — The plumage very delicate, the barbs long, slender, and detached, but lying 

 smoothly so as to form a dense covering. The colour is pure bluish-grey on the tail 

 coverts and posterior part of the back, but elsewhere, both on the ventral and dorsal aspects 

 and on the crest, it is yellowish-grey, deepening on the head and neck into a pleasing brownish- 

 grey. Front and under tail coverts bright reddish-orange :f chin and a band on each side 

 of the head deep velvet-black. Primary coverts and quill feathers brownish-black, with a 

 conspicuous band on the tips of the former : the first primary and the tertiaries unspotted; 

 the remaining quills with each a linear spot on the tip of its outer web, which is of a pale 

 king's-yellow on four or five of the primaries, and white on the rest and on the secondaries. 

 Six or seven of the secondaries, and occasionally the longest tertiary, have their shafts ter- 

 minating in a curious, small, oblong, flat, cartilaginous process, of a bright carmine-red 



* I observed a large flock, consisting of at least three or four hundred individuals, on the banks of the Saskatchewan, 

 at Carlton House, early in May, 1827. They alighted in a grove of poplars, settling all on one or two trees, and making 

 a loud twittering noise. They stayed only about an hour in the morning, and were too shy to allow me to approach 

 within gunshot. 



f The exact colour meant is buff, mixed with tile-red and chestnut-brown, and answering nearly to the helvolus of 

 authors. 



