BY THE WAYSIDE 
61 
SCHOOL BRANCH DEPARTMENT 
Every Wisconsin School Branch is required to subscribe for at least one copy of BY THE WAYSIDE 
Letters to this department should be writ¬ 
ten on only one side of the page, should give 
name, age and address of the writer, and 
should be mailed by the first of the month; 
Illinois writers sending to Miss Mary Drum¬ 
mond, Spring Lane. Lake Forest, Ill., and 
Wisconsin writers to Miss Edith Edwards, 
Appleton, Wis. To each writer whose letter 
is published will be sent a beautiful colored 
picture of the bird of the month. For the 
best letter each month we will send the 
Wayside free for one year. Preference will 
be given to letters about the bird study for 
the month and to original observations. 
The wren button, which is the badge of the 
Audubon Society, costs two cents and can be 
bought from Miss Mary Drummond or Mr. 
Moyle. 
Apy Wisconsin society, may, by paying the 
express, have the use of the Gordan and 
Merrill Libraries of bird books by applying 
to Mr. Moyle. 
A set of colored bird slides with a type¬ 
written lecture may be rented from Chas. E. 
Brown. State Historical Building, Madison, 
Wis. Illinois Schools may use, without ex¬ 
pense, a library or a lecture with lantern 
slides, by applying to Mis6 Bunnel, Academy 
of Sciences, Chicago. 
The Snowflake. 
The Snowflake or Snow Bunting is us¬ 
ually classed as an irregular winter vis¬ 
itor to Northern Illinois, but as a matter 
of fact it is a regular winter resident in 
the Mississippi valley as far south as 40° 
north latitude, and occurs irregularly in 
winter to about 36°. North of 40° the 
birds are more numerous, but are locally 
irregular in their movements at all times. 
In a general way the country to the 
southward of about 40° is occupied by 
the Lapland Longspurs and northward 
by the Snowflakes. 
In the districts near Chicago the win¬ 
ter homes of these two birds overlap— 
both species being found in winter in 
Cook county and frequently in the same 
flock. The Snowflake is a regular win¬ 
ter resident in the northern counties of 
Illinois arriving about the middle of 
November and departing about the 20th 
of March. Last fall (1908) a small flock 
arrived in Jackson Park, Chicago, No¬ 
vember 8th, and a flock of about 100 ap¬ 
peared on the golf grounds in Jackson 
Park November 15th, where they were 
observed almost every day for about two 
weeks. 
These birds were in dark brown plu¬ 
mage, a flash of white showing only when 
they were on the wing. When feeding 
on the ground they might easily be mis¬ 
taken for Longspurs. They were not at 
all wild and permitted the golfers to ap¬ 
proach within a few yards and would 
then fly but a short distance. 
The Snowflake is a bird of the Arctic 
Zone, nesting in North America on the 
barren grounds north of the limit of tree 
growth from the northern shores of Lab¬ 
rador across the continent to Alaska, and 
along the sholes of Baffin’s Bay and 
islands of the Arctic ocean to at least 80° 
of north latitude. The expeditions sent 
out bv the Biological Survey to Alaska 
and Hudson Bay 1899 and 1900 found 
no Snowflakes nesting in the regions vis¬ 
ited, although one expedition ascended 
the west shore of Hudson Bay above Ft. 
Churchill to about 60° of latitude. If 
any of these birds nested on these shores 
they would no doubt have been observed. 
We must conclude therefore that their 
summer home is still farther north. 
However, a Canadian expedition sent 
out in 1903 found them in abundance on 
the Northwestern shores of Hudson Bay 
near the entrance to Chesterfield Inlet, 
latitude 63°, and from there northward 
along the shores of Baffin’s Bay to 78° 
north. This expedition found the Snow¬ 
flake the most abundant bird of these 
Arctic shores, outnumbering all other 
species combined. The birds began to 
leave Chesterfield Inlet in the fall of 1903 
about September 15th, and none were 
seen after September 26th. In the spring 
of 1904 they arrived April 7th to April 
20th, but did not begin nesting until last 
of June. The nests were placed on the 
ground, under projecting rocks or bould¬ 
ers, and contained from three to seven 
eggs. 
In full breeding plumage the colors 
are pure white and black, quite different 
