Snow Bunting Feeding Chicks
Plectrophenax nivalis

f11 @ 1/1600s, ISO:800, Nikon D300S w 500mm and 1.4X tele-extender


\"Snow Bunting,\" Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The Snow Bunting (Plectrophenax nivalis), sometimes colloquially called a snowflake, is a passerine bird in the longspur 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, and also Cape Breton Highlands.It builds its bulky nest in rock crevices. The eggs are blue-green, spotted brown, and hatch in 12–13 days, and the young are already ready to fly after a further 12–14 days.
Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, Canada
 
07/05/2011