United States or Czechia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Captain Lyon found a child's grave partly uncovered, and a snow-bunting had built its nest upon the infant's bosom. Sailing round Melville Peninsula, we come into the Gulf of Akkolee, through Fury and Hecla Straits, discovered by Parry.
A few leaves also of the Polygonum Viviparum were found in one or two specimens. The snow-bunting, with its sprightly note, was, as usual, one of our earliest visitants in the spring; but these were few in number and remained only a short time. A very few sand-pipers were also seen, and now and then one or two glaucous, ivory, and kittiwake gulls.
The musical and merry "chickadee-dee-dee" of the tamest of the birds of winter and the somewhat sadder note of the wood pewee mingled with the occasional caw of a crow, the shrill cry of a jay, or the tapping of woodpeckers upon the boles of dead trees. A flock of snow-bunting fluttered and fed in a patch of dry seed-laden weeds.
They are brilliant singers. "The snow-bird and snow-bunting are not identical by any means; indeed, each is of a different genus. The bunting's true home is in the far North, and it is not apt to be abundant here except in severe weather.
For this reason, the ptarmigan and the willow grouse become as white in winter as the vast snow-fields under which they burrow; the ermine changes his dusky summer coat for the expensive wintry suit beloved of British Themis; the snow-bunting acquires his milk-white plumage; and even the weasel assimilates himself more or less in hue to the unvarying garb of arctic nature.
Occasionally they reported old tracks of reindeer and foxes, but the winter colds had driven everything far inland. Once only Clarke shot a snow-bunting, a little bird hardly bigger than a sparrow. Still Bennett pushed forward.
The ptarmigan and the snow-buntings that look most like the snow have for ages been least likely to attract the unfavourable attention of arctic fox or prowling ermine; the fox or ermine that came most silently and most unperceived across the shifting drifts has been most likely to steal unawares upon the heedless flocks of ptarmigan and snow-bunting.
Forth sallied the two children, with a hop-skip-and-jump, that carried them at once into the very heart of a huge snow-drift, whence Violet emerged like a snow-bunting, while little Peony floundered out with his round face in full bloom. Then what a merry time had they!
The snow-bunting, the jerfalcon, and the snowy owl are also white-coloured birds inhabiting the arctic regions, and there can be little doubt but that their colouring is to some extent protective. Nocturnal animals supply us with equally good illustrations.
In winter, especially, they sweep by me and around me in flocks, the Canada sparrow, the snow-bunting, the shore-lark, the pine grosbeak, the red-poll, the cedar-bird, feeding upon frozen apples in the orchard, upon cedar-berries, upon maple-buds, and the berries of the mountain ash, and the celtis, and upon the seeds of the weeds that rise above the snow in the field, or upon the hay-seed dropped where the cattle have been foddered in the barn-yard or about the distant stack; but yet taking no heed of man, in no way changing their habits so as to take advantage of his presence in nature.
Word Of The Day