Bird of the Day

Snow Buntings are arriving from the Arctic with flocks settling around weedy and gravelly patches where there’s an abundance of seeds. Also called “Snowbirds” or “Snowflakes,” they are a circumpolar songbird, breeding in the treeless tundras of the Northern Hemisphere, and in the US don’t migrate much farther south on than the Chesapeake and Midwestern states. They are mostly white with dark wingtips and large white patches in the wings, a dark central stripe in the white tail, and shades of caramel around their back and heads while in winter plumages. I’ll have close-ups later on in the season. These fetched up last week at Rye Harbor State Park, in a flock of about 65.