On 3 November 1981 we found a freshly dead female Snow Bunting, Plectrophenax nivalis, at the Tanner Ranch, 2 km southwest of Littlefield in Mohave County, Arizona. This unusually early southern occurrence constitutes the first specimen (University of Arizona 14222) reported in Arizona. The nearest previous sightings were 95 km to the northeast in Zion National Park, Utah, where two birds were seen in January 1979 (Kingery, Am. Birds 33:302, 1979) and 1980 (Kingery, Am. Birds 34:295, 1980).
We found the bird in Bermuda Grass (Cynodon dactylon) pasture adjacent to a small pond in the Virgin River floodplain at an elevation of 600 m. The typical habitat surrounding the floodplain is Mohave Desert scrub dominated by Creosote Bush (Larrea tridentata), White Bursage (Ambrosia dumosa), and Opuntia spp.