Snow bunting
The snow bunting (Plectrophenax nivalis) is a passerine bird in the family Calcariidae. It is an Arctic specialist, with a circumpolar Arctic breeding range throughout the northern hemisphere. There are small isolated populations on a few high mountain tops south of the Arctic region, including the Cairngorms in central Scotland and the Saint Elias Mountains on the southern Alaska-Yukon border, as well as the Cape Breton Highlands. The snow bunting is the most northerly recorded passerine in the world. The snow bunting was formally described by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in 1758 in the tenth edition of his Systema Naturae. He placed it with the buntings in the genus Emberiza and coined the binomial name Emberiza nivalis. He specified the locality as Lapland. It is now placed in the genus Plectrophenax that was introduced in 1882 by the Norwegian born zoologist Leonhard Stejneger with the snow bunting as the type species. The genus name Plectrophenax is from Ancient Greek plektron, "cock’s spur", and phenax "imposter", and the specific nivalis is Latin for "snow-white". The snow bunting was formerly classified in the family Emberizidae, which included American sparrows, buntings, towhees and finches. All these species came into existence after a broad geologically recent radiation of passerine birds. However, it is now part of the narrower family Calcariidae, which also contains the longspurs. Despite the wide distribution of this species there are only very small differences between different phenotypes. Four subspecies are recognised, which differ slightly in the plumage pattern of breeding males: P. n. nivalis (Linnaeus, 1758) – Arctic Europe, Arctic North America. Head white, rump mostly black with a small area of white. P. n. insulae Salomonsen, 1931 – Iceland, Faroe Islands, Scotland. Head white with a blackish collar, rump black. P. n. vlasowae Portenko, 1937 – Arctic Asia. Head white, rump mostly white. P. n. townsendi Ridgway, 1887 – Aleutian Islands, Kamchatka, coastal far eastern Siberia.
