Snow Bunting
Plectrophenax nivalis
The Snow Bunting nests highest in the mountains of all bird species. In some cases the common gull can challenge the record, and also nests on small, very elevated lakes. At levels above 900 m above sea level, the Snow Bunting is a fairly common bird in Laponia. You see it above all näära near areas with large boulders and places with meltwater streams. There is a greater abundance of insects there, and that is where the Snow Bunting finds food for its young. It feeds the young with small insects which it often picks from snowdrifts where the insect have happened to fasten. In nesting period is it will also eats seeds from year old crowberries.
The Snow Bunting can nest in the most barren environments in the entire polar region – even on mountain summits on the inland ice in Greenland. As regards nesting in northern latitudes, it is probably only the Raven that can challenge the Snow Bunting .
The Snow Bunting winters on southerly coasts around the Baltic Sea, and Norwegian coasts, and can be considered almost a seashore species in the winter months. It then lives on for example grass seeds which it finds on waterside meadows around the southern Baltic Sea and North Sea.