By the Rev. A. C. Smith. 



83 



is narrow and smaller than the lower one : they are somewhat 

 clumsy in form, with large heads and short necks, and heavy in 

 flight ; they eat grain and seeds in the winter, but in the summer 

 insects and their larvae form no small portion of their food. 



"Snow Bunting." (Plectrophanes nivalis). This native of 

 northern regions seldom comes so far South as Wiltshire, though 

 it appears pretty regularly every winter on our Eastern and North- 

 ern coasts, and I have met with it in considerable numbers on the 

 shores of the " Wash " in Norfolk : at that season, however, its 

 plumage is reddish brown above and dull white beneath, and so 

 much do individuals vary from one another in hue as well as in 

 the distribution of their colours, that they have often been erro- 

 neously divided into several species, receiving the sobriquet of 

 " Tawny" and " Mountain " Bunting, according to their sex and 

 age and garb : but it is in summer plumage and in the extreme 

 North that this bird is to be seen in perfection, arrayed in its 

 attractive dress of deep black and pure white, and haunting the 

 highest and most desolate fj elds of Scandinavia: and there I have been 

 so fortunate as to meet with it on several occasions, now flitting from 

 one lichen covered rock to another, now running quickly over the snow, 

 seeming to delight in those wild inhospitable regions, so conge- 

 nial to its habits, but so little to the taste of most members of the 

 animal kingdom. I have never seen it in this County, but I learn 

 from Mr. Withers that it has been occasionally killed in various 

 localities, and brought to him for preservation ; and Mr. Elgar 

 Sloper of Devizes informs me that he has seen several which had 

 been killed on Salisbury Plain : I should therefore suppose it to be 

 an occasional and not very infrequent straggler, though by no 

 means a regular winter visitant here. 



" Common Bunting.'' (Emberiza miliaria.) Though extremely 

 common, especially in the vast tracks of arable land on our downs, 

 this bird from its great similarity of plumage to the Skylark is 

 seldom recognized by ordinary observers : and yet its more bulky 

 shape and heavier gait and more awkward flight should at once 

 distinguish it from its more sprightly companion: it has little or 

 no song, but may be seen perched on the topmost spray of some 



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