Snow Bunting Tracks

• Language: unknown
• Subjects: Alar; Snow Bunting
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2047/D20321101

Accompanying Journal Entry: "P.M. To M. Miles. Near Nut Meadow Brook, on the Jimmy Miles road, I see a flock of snow buntings. They are feeding exclusively on that ragged weed which I take to be Roman wormwood. Their tracks where they sink in the snow are very long, i.e., have a very long heel, thus: or sometimes almost in a single straight line. They made notes when they went, -- sharp, rippling, like a vibrating spring. They had run about to every such such [sic], leaving distinct tracks raying from and to them, while the snow immediately about the weed was so tracked and pecked where the seeds fell that no track was distinct. Miles had hanging in his barn a little owl (Strix Acadica) which he caught alive with his hands about a week ago. He had forced it to eat, but it died. It was a funny little brown bird, spotted with white, seven and a half inches long to the end of the tail, or eight to the end of the claws, by nineteen in alar extent, -- not so long by considerable as a robin, though much stouter. This one had three (not two) white bars on its tail, but no noticeable white at the tip. Its cunning feet were feathered quite to the extremity of the toes, looking like whitish (or tawny-white) mice, or as when one pulls stockings over his boots. As usual, the white spots on the upper sides of the wings are smaller and a more distinct white, while those beneath are much larger, but a subdued, satiny white. Even a birds wing has an upper and under side, and the last admits only of more subdued and tender colors."