Skip to content
- Snow Buntings live amongst Innuit settlements in the Arctic and head south from October onwards to spend winter in Scotland and along the coast.
- Male snow buntings have white heads in the summer but more mottled plumage in winter.
- They are the most northerly breeding of any land bird on earth and breed around the arctic from Scandinavia to Alaska, Canada and Greenland.
- There are only 60 breeding pairs in the UK. 10,000 to 15,000 winter in the UK though.
- They are an Amber list bird, listed under Schedule 1 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act
- They are sometimes seen on the Cowbar clifftop and along the old road and Cleveland Way
- As flocks move they ‘leapfrog’ with the birds at the back constantly fluttering over those ahead of them. This creates a constantly rolling motion which has been described as ‘a small blizzard of birds’.
- One of their regional names is ‘snow flecks’ – ‘Snah Fuhl’ in Shetland.
