118 
The Snow Bunting 
Of all these birds of the wind the Snow Bunting is the most winning, 
allowing us to come near him as he feeds, and venturing close to our 
houses, barnyards and hayricks in search of food, sometimes to the very 
doorstep itself, where, a few years ago, I saw a small flock ol seven feast- 
ing upon the waste that had been thrown out from the Canary’s cage. 
Few birds have more appropriate and descriptive names than this; 
yet “bunting” is a term that is hardly naturalized 
Names in America, so that it is not strange to find “Snow- 
flake” taking its place. Sometimes our visitor is 
called White Snowbird to distinguish it from the more familiar Blue 
Snowbird ( Junco ). 
After the snowfall has ceased, and we look across the open toward 
the woods, a slight movement draws the eye toward a protected hollow 
where bent and broken stalks o*f mullein, ragweed, and wild sunflowers still 
hold their heads above the snow. 
What is it we see — brown leaves drifting about? Impossible! The 
only uncovered leaves are those few that cling, dry and rustling, to the 
young beeches and oaks. 
Work your way carefully toward the nearest shelter, field-glass in 
hand, and you will see a flock of plump, compactly built birds, a little 
larger than the familiar English Sparrow. At first you will have difficulty 
in separating them from the snow, for they are all white underneath 
and have much white on the neck, head, wings, and tail. The Snow 
Bunting’s color is a deep rust-red, but it is so mixed with the white that, 
at a short distance, the plumage takes on: all the dead-leaf hues of fawn 
and russet, as if the birds were themselves animated leaves frolicking 
with the blowing snow. This is the Snow Bunting’s winter dress; in 
summer he wears clear black and white. 
This Bunting is one of the small group of circumpolar birds whose 
summer home is within the Arctic Circle, and it nests on the barrens 
north of the limit of forest-growth, in that desolate region that the 
Canadian Indians call “the land of little sticks,” and on 
Circumpolar the mossy plains that skirt the Arctic shores of Asia 
and Europe. Thence in winter it descends into central 
Europe and to China as it does in America into the northern United 
States. Its southward migration is aways uncertain and irregular on 
both continents. 
The Snow Bunting belongs to the ground-loving portion of its tribe, 
if such a distinction is allowable. Not only does it nest on the ground, 
but spends most of its time there. I doubt if it even roosts in trees, 
for those that I have observed took shelter, after feeding, either in a brush- 
heap or in the edges of a corn-stack. The Longspur clings to the ground 
in the same way, and the Horned Lark also ; and we can easily see that 
this trait would be a matter of heredity in species that are natives 
of countries offering so poor perching accommodations as do the treeless 
Arctic shores. 
