SNOW BUNTING. 
327 
security, the duties of love, incubation, and nutrition. That 
they breed in Spitzbergen, is very probable ; but we are 
assured that they do so in Greenland. They arrive there in 
April, and make their nests in the fissures of the rocks, on the 
mountains, in May ; the outside of their nest is grass, the 
middle of feathers, and the lining the down of the Arctic fox. 
They lay five eggs, white, spotted with brown : they sing 
finely near their nest. 
“ They are caught by the boys in autumn when they 
collect near the shores in great flocks, in order to migrate ; 
and are eaten dried. * 
“ In Europe, they inhabit, during summer, the most naked 
Lapland alps, and descend in rigorous seasons into Sweden, 
and fill the roads and fields ; on which account the Dalecarlians 
call them illwarsfogel , or bad- weather birds — the Uplanders, 
hardwarsfogel , expressive of the same. The Laplanders style 
them alaipg. Leemsf remarks, I know not with what founda- 
tion, that they fatten on the flowing of the tides in Finmark, 
and grow lean on the ebb. The Laplanders take them in 
great numbers in hair springs, for the tables, their flesh being 
very delicate. 
t£ They seem to make the countries within the whole Arctic 
circle their summer residence, from whence they overflow the 
more southern countries in amazing multitudes, at the setting 
in of winter in the frigid zone. In the winter of 1778-9, they 
came in such multitudes into Birsa, one of the Orkney Islands, 
as to cover the whole barony ; yet of all the numbers, hardly 
two agreed in colours. 
66 Lapland, and perhaps Iceland, furnishes the north of 
Britain with the swarms that frequent these parts during 
winter, as low as the Cheviot Hills, in lat. 52° 32'. Their 
resting places, the Feroe Isles, Shetland, and the Orkneys. 
The Highlands of Scotland, in particular, abound with them. 
Their flights are immense, and they mingle so closely together 
* Faun. Greenl. 118. 
f Finmark, 255. 
