Identifier: birdsEuropeIIIGoul (find matches)
Title: The birds of Europe
Year: 1837 (1830s)
Authors: Gould, John, 1804-1881
Subjects: Pictorial works Birds
Publisher: London, Printed by R. and J.E. Taylor, pub. by the author
Contributing Library: Smithsonian Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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separating it into a distinct genus will be fullysubstantiated. Of its food and nidification nothing is known. The sexes are alike in plumage and may be thus described: The whole of the head, back of the neck, scapularies, and upper tail-coverts pale greyish brown ; wing-coverts dark brown, margined with pale brown ; base and tips of the secondaries white, forming a double bandacross the centre of the wing, the intermediate space dark brown, with pale brown edges ; primaries darkbrown; tail-feathers dark brown, with the exterior web of the outer feather on each side, and the extremeedge of the next, white ; all the remainder edged with pale brown ; stripe before and behind the eye and onefrom the angle of the mouth dark brown ; throat, sides of the face, under part of the wings, and all the undersurface dull white; the lower part of the throat and the breast ornamented with numerous oblong spots ofdark brown ; bill and feet yellowish. We have figured an adult male of the natural size.
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■LAEE-HEEIiEB BUR7Plectrophanes lappoiiica; /6e ^ LARK-HEELED BUNTING. Plectrophanes Lapponica, Selby.Le Bruant M on tain. So little is known of the history and changes of plumage which this scarce bird undergoes, that we are left indoubt as to whether the tricoloured livery of the upper bird in our Plate, which is that of the male in summer,is exchanged in winter, as in the case of the Snow Bunting, for a more uniform and sober dress, or whether,like some of the more typical Buntings, (Emberiza Schceniculus, Linn., for example,) it retains its stronglycontrasted colouring throughout the year. We make this observation because there have been frequentlyexamples killed in England, all of which resembled the lower bird of the Plate. Some of these, on dissection,proved to be males, and were most probably immature birds, the migrations of which are known to be,according to the general rule, both more widely diffused and more irregular in their course than those ofmature birds. The summer

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