THE ALASKA LONGSPUR 
By EDWARD W. NELSON 
The National Association of Audubon Societies 
Educational Leaflet No. 67 
The Alaska Longspur is the western variety of the Lapland Longspur, 
distinguished from the normal eastern longspurs by the comparative pale- 
ness of its colors. The Lapland Longspur is a bunting closely related 
to the Snowflake, and one of a genus remarkable, as its name indicates, 
for the great length of the claw of the hind toe, which is as long as the 
toe itself. The home of the species is in high northern latitudes, extend- 
ing around the whole circle of the polar sea, these buntings frequenting 
in summer the most northerly coasts and islands 
of Siberia and Europe, as well as Iceland, Green- 
Home of 
Longspurs 
land, and the shores and islands of Arctic America. 
West of the Mackenzie River the Alaskan, or pale, race of this long- 
spur is extremely abundant and familiar in summer all over the tundra, 
or treeless coast-barren, and on islands in Bering Sea ; and it breeds 
througbout the coastal region from Kadiak Island to the Arctic Ocean. 
The males reach Dawson, on the upper Yukon, from the south, be- 
tween the 5th and i8th of April, in nearly perfect breeding-plumage. 
About the end of April they arrive at St. Michael, on the coast of Bering 
Sea, and are known to reach southern Greenland about the same time. 
Murdock tells us that they are abundant in summer at Point Barrow, 
where they arrive about May 20. The first eggs are laid there by the 
beginning of June, and the birds begin to migrate southward at the end of 
August or early in September. On the western Aleutian Islands, Dali 
found them to be abundant summer residents, and discovered a nest with 
four much-incubated eggs on June 18. They leave these islands in winter; 
and I may add that I do not know of a winter record from any part of 
Alaska. 
During the summer of 1881, I found them nesting on St. Lawrence 
Island, in Bering Sea, and on both sides of Bering Strait, but saw no trace 
of them on either Wrangel or Herald islands. They are well known and 
abundant on the Fur Seal Islands, where they are the 
most beautiful songsters among the limited number of Arctic 
land-birds summering there. They winter through- 
out north-central Europe and middle Asia eastward of Japan, and in the 
northern United States, mainly from the Great Lakes to Oregon and 
Washington, but sometimes as far south as Texas. 
Early in May, the tundra on the Alaskan coast of Bering Sea is still 
mostly covered with snow, except in grassy spots on southern exposures 
and in other favorably situated places. Here the first male longspurs 
265 
