Called also: SNOW BUNTING [AOU 1998]; WHITEBIRD; SNOWBIRD; SNOW
LARK
Length -- 7 to 7.5 inches. About one-fourth smaller than the
robin.
Male and Female -- Head, neck, and beneath soiled white, with a
few reddish-brown feathers on top of head, and suggesting an
imperfect collar. Above, grayish brown obsoletely streaked with
black, the markings being most conspicuous in a band between
shoulders. Lower tail feathers black; others, white and all
edged with white. Wings brown, white, and gray. Plumage
unusually variable. In summer dress (in arctic regions) the
bird is almost white.
Range -- Circumpolar regions to Kentucky (in winter only).
Migrations -- Midwinter visitor; rarely, if ever, resident south
of arctic regions.
These snowflakes (mentioned collectively, for it is impossible to think of the
bird except in great flocks) are the "true spirits of the snowstorm," says
Thoreau. They are animated beings that ride upon it, and have their life in
it. By comparison with the climate of the arctic regions, no doubt our
hardiest winter weather seems luxuriously mild to them. We associate them only
with those wonderful midwinter days when sky, fields, and woods alike are
white, and a "hard, dull bitterness of cold" drives every other bird and beast
to shelter. It is said they often pass the night buried beneath the snow. They
have been seen to dive beneath it to escape a hawk.
Whirling about in the drifting snow to catch the seeds on the tallest stalks
that the wind in the open meadows uncovers, the snowflakes suggest a lot of
dead leaves being blown through the all-pervading whiteness. Beautiful soft
brown, gray, and predominating black-and-white coloring distinguish these
capricious visitors from the slaty junco, the "snowbird" more commonly known.
They are, indeed, the only birds we have that are nearly white; and rarely, if
ever, do they rise far above the ground their plumage so admirably imitates.
At the far north, travellers have mentioned their inspiriting song, but in the
United States we hear only their cheerful twitter. Nansen tells of seeing an
occasional snow bunting in that desolation of arctic ice where the Fram
drifted so long.