Bird of the week - Snow bunting

These snow buntings have been hanging around at St Mary's Island, near Whitley Bay for the past two or three weeks. They are fairly approachable but constantly on the move searching for seeds.  There are three but I never managed to get all three in the same photo.  I think these are probably a first winter male (L) and and a mature male, or possibly just two males.

Here is the female (front) with the younger male.

This is the male in his winter plumage.

Here is the female.

And the one I think is a younger male.

The older male has white outer tail feathers which show well when he flies.

The female shows a similar pattern.

Snow buntings (Plectrophenax nivalis) are found all around the northern hemisphere.  They breed in the far north and ours are occasional winter visitors from Scandinavia and Iceland.  In Swedish the snow bunting is snösparv, in Norwegian it is Snøspurv and in Icelandic it is Snjótittlingur.

By Cephas - BirdLife International. 2016. Plectrophenax nivalis. https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=68884160

Thomas Bewick included the snow bunting in A History of British Birds with this illustration of a male in summer plumage.

He also include a tawny bunting

but in the 1826 edition he added

so his tawny bunting was either a female snow bunting or a male in winter plumage.

John James Audubon painted these snow buntings for Birds of America.

Archibald Thorburn painted a male snow bunting in breeding plumage.

This composite image from Wikipedia shows the variations in plumage, including males in summer breeding plumage in white and black.

By Richard Crossley - The Crossley ID Guide Britain and Ireland, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=29448050.

You can listen to Sir David Attenborough's BBC Radio 4 Tweet of the Day on snow buntings here.