(_Calcarius lapponicus_) Finch family
_Called also_: LAPLAND SNOWBIRD; LAPLAND LARK BUNTING
_Length_--6.5 to 7 inches. A trifle larger than the English
sparrow.
_Male_--Color varies with season. _Winter plumage_: Top of
head black, with rusty markings, all feathers being tipped
with white. Behind and below the eye rusty black. Breast and
underneath grayish white, faintly streaked with black. Above,
reddish brown with black markings. Feet, which are black, have
conspicuous, long hind claws or spur.
_Female_--Rusty gray above, less conspicuously marked. Whitish
below.
_Range_--Circumpolar regions; northern United States;
occasional in Middle States; abundant in winter as far as
Kansas and the Rocky Mountains.
_Migrations_--Winter visitors, rarely resident, and without a
fixed season.
This arctic bird, although considered somewhat rare with us, when seen
at all in midwinter is in such large flocks that, before its visit in
the neighborhood is ended, and because there are so few other birds
about, it becomes delightfully familiar as it nimbly runs over the
frozen ground, picking up grain that has blown about from the barn,
when the seeds of the field are buried under snow. This lack of fear
through sharp hunger, that often drives the shyest of the birds to our
very doors in winter, is as pathetic as it is charming. Possibly it is
not so rare a bird as we think, for it is often mistaken for some of
the sparrows, the shore larks, and the snow buntings, that it not only
resembles, but whose company it frequently keeps, or for one of the
other longspurs.
At all seasons of the year a ground bird, you may readily identify the
Lapland longspur by its tracks through the snow, showing the mark of
the long hind claw or spur. In summer we know little or nothing about
it, for, with the coming of the flowers, it is off to the far north,
where, we are told, it depresses its nest in a bed of moss upon the
ground, and lines it with fur shed from the coat of the arctic fox.