Snow Bunting on the Oregon Coast
Snow Bunting on the Oregon Coast.-On November 10, 1945, at about 4 p.m., two Snow Buntings (Plectrophenax nivalis nivalis) were observed at Yaquina Head, Lincoln County, Oregon. The birds were flushed within 100 yards of one another from the gravel road leading to the lighthouse but were lost to view when they flew up the windswept, grassy ridge. An hour later at dusk one of the buntings was again encountered on the road where it had been seen previously. When approached, the bird flew about 30 feet ahead only to return and alight at the same spot from which it had risen. This individual, a male in good condition, was shot and preserved as a skin (no. 774) in the writer’s collection.
This specimen appears to be the third skin obtained from western Oregon and the first from Lincoln County. In their account of the Snow Bunting, Gabrielson and Jewett (Birds of Oregon, 1940:599) list two skins collected on the coast at Netarts in Tillamook County 60 miles north of Yaquina Head on December 31, 1912, and October 27, 1934, and refer to an old winter sight record made about 1900 at Yaquina Bay. The species is regarded as an irregular winter visitor to eastern Oregon.-HAROLD E. BROADBOOKS, Newport, Oregon, January 16, 1946.
