'THEY WOULD FLING THEMSELVES INTO THE SKY ALMOST LIKE A SHUTTLECOCK'

                                                                 

Snow bunting on beach at Cleethorpes in North East Lincolnshire

Snow buntings are a great favourite with UK birders, but few get the opportunity to see them in their favoured summer habitats in  the Arctic. One who studied them closely while on a trip to Siberia in 1875 was Sheffield steel magnate and ornithologist Henry Seebohm (1832-95). Below is his commentary on the species as published in the first volume of his fascinating book, The Birds of Siberia.

At Mezen we were much interested in watching a large flock of snow buntings. 

Their favourite resort was the steep bank of the river where they found abundance of food in the manure which was thrown away. 

In a country where there is plenty of grass in summer and very little corn is cultivated and where the cattle have to be stall-fed for seven or eight months out of the twelve, manure apparently is of little value, and hundreds of cartloads are annually deposited on the steep banks of the river where it is washed away by the floods caused by the sudden melting of the snow in May. 

The snow buntings were also frequently seen round the hole in the ice on the river where the inhabitants of Mezen obtained their supply of water. 

In both places, the boys of the village had set white horsehair snares and seemed to be very successful in their sport. 

At this time of the year (March), these birds are fat and are excellent eating. 

We were told that, in a fortnight, they would be here in much greater numbers, and would be sold for a rouble the hundred or even less. 

None of the birds we got were in full summer plumage, yet they looked extremely handsome as they ran along the snow like a wagtail or a dotterel or fluttered from place to place with a butterfly-like kind of flight. 

We occasionally saw them hop, but they generally preferred to run. 

The most interesting fact which we observed was that the snow bunting occasionally perches in trees. 

We saw two in the forest, one of which perched in a spruce fir.

When we later watched them  in the streets of Ust-Zylma, we were told that they arrived April 1.

In spite of its abundance, we could not help looking upon it with all the interest attaching to a rare bird. 

The brilliant contrast of the black and white on the plumage of these birds, then rapidly assuming their summer dress, was especially beautiful during flight. 

The flight itself is peculiar, somewhat like that of a butterfly, as if it altered its mind every few seconds as to which direction it would take.

It can scarcely be called an undulating flight. 

The bird certainly does rest its wings every few seconds, but either they are expanded when at rest, or they are rested for so short a time that the plane of flight is not sufficiently altered to warrant its being called undulatory. 

The snow buntings in Ust-Zylma were principally in flocks, but, now and then, we saw a couple of birds together which seemed to have paired, and occasionally, when the sun was hotter than usual, a solitary specimen might be seen perched upon a rail attempting to sing, but we never heard them sing on the wing. 

Unfortunately, we did not get far enough north to meet with these birds at their breeding stations.

In 1874, when the Norwegian ornithologist, Robert Collett, and I were in Norway, we found the snow bunting breeding on the island of Vadso in the Varanger Fjord. 

We were too late for eggs, as this bird is a very early breeder, and the young were already in the nest by the middle of June.

However, we had many opportunities of watching the male birds. 

They would fling themselves up into the air almost like a shuttlecock, singing all the time a low and melodious warble, not unlike that of a shorelark or perhaps still more like that of the Lapland bunting, and they would immediately descend in a spiral curve with wing and tails expanded, and finish their song on a rock. 

Although we only once or twice heard the snow buntings attempting to sing in Ust-Zylma, they were by no means silent birds and were continually calling to each other. 

The call note is a zh, not unlike that of the brambling or greenfinch. 

The alarm-note is a loud tweek.

As they fly together in flocks they merely twitter to each other, not unlike purple sandpipers on the seashore.

                                           

Henry Seebohm - businessman and birder