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Updated: June 4, 2025
Mr. Fisher found very good sport in our new station, having returned in the evening, after a few hours' excursion, with nine hares; the birds had, of late, almost entirely deserted us, a flock or two of ptarmigan and snow-buntings, a few glaucous gulls, a raven, and an owl, being all that had been met with for several days.
Hares’ burrows were numerous on this hill; Lieutenant Ross saw two of these animals, one of which he killed. A fox was also observed in its summer dress; and these, with a pair of ravens, some wingless ducks, and several snow-buntings, were all the animals noticed at this place.
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.
When they alight, they seldom make a curve or gyration, but descend in a straight and oblique course. Snow-Buntings usually turn about, just before they reach the ground; and I have seen them perform the most intricate changes, like the movements of a cotillon-party, executed with the rapidity of arrows, when suddenly checked in their flight by the discovery of a good tract of forage.
Hence our attention is more closely attracted to them at this time, as many parties of them will visit our neighborhood in the course of the day, when if no snow had fallen, they would have confined themselves to a more limited range. One of the most attractive sights on such occasions is caused by the flocks of Snow-Buntings, which are particularly gregarious in their habits.
The partridge comes to the orchard for buds; the rabbit comes to the garden and lawn; the crows and jays come to the ash-heap and corn-crib, the snow-buntings to the stack and to the barn-yard; the sparrows pilfer from the domestic fowls; the pine grosbeak comes down from the north and shears your maples of their buds; the fox prowls about your premises at night, and the red squirrels find your grain in the barn or steal the butternuts from your attic.
The vivid crossbills, red and black and white, would come to the yard in flocks, and the quaker-coloured snow-buntings, and the big, trustful, childlike, pine grosbeaks, with the growing stain of rose-purple over their heads and necks. These kept Lidey interested, helping to pass the days that now, to her excited anticipations, seemed so long.
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