WILLOW PTARMIGAN. 45 



periods of famine are ever recurring among the natives, and these 

 birds frequently stand between them and starvation. It rears but 

 one brood in a season, nesting on the ground early in June and laying 

 from 7 to 12 eggs. By the middle of August the young are nearly 

 grown. In the northern part of its range the willow ptarmigan is 

 a summer resident only, and at the approach of winter most of the 

 birds migrate in large flocks, sometimes numbering a thousand or 

 more, southward or inland to a region of scattered trees or bushes. 

 Ernest Thompson Seton, quoting from Hutchins' manuscript con- 

 cerning observations at Hudson Bay in 1782, says that over 10,000 

 ptarmigans were caught with nets at Severn from November to 

 April." The birds are so tame, especially in winter, that their cap- 

 ture is easy. Like all other gallinaceous birds, ptarmigans require 

 gravel for milling their food, and in winter deep snow makes this 

 hard to procure. The natives, taking advantage of the birds' neces- 

 sities, bait their nets with gravel, and sometimes catch as many as 

 300 at one spring of a net.^ E. W. Nelson writes of encountering 

 flocks of several thousand white ptarmigans in Alaska in midwinter, 

 and says that the whirring of their wings as they rose sounded like 

 the roll of thunder and seemed to shake the ground. He reports 

 that the birds are snared and shot in great numbers by both the 

 Alaskan Eskimos and the Indians.'" The flesh is not so palatable as 

 that of many other game birds, and is decidedly dry and often 

 bitter when the bird feeds on willow buds. The flesh of old birds 

 is -dark colored, but that of the young is Avhite and delicately flavored. 



FOOD HABITS. 



Study of the food of the willow ptarmigan unfortunately has 

 been slight, for only five birds were available. Their food was 

 entirely vegetable. Three shot in January in Labrador had eaten 10 

 percent of berries and 90 percent of buds, more than half the buds 

 being willow. One stomach contained about 300 willow-flower buds. 

 The two other birds were collected in December in Labrador and had 

 eaten willow buds exclusively. Though the data are so scantj'^, the 

 results agree with those of other students. Ludwig Kumlien, for 

 instance, says : ** 



They [willow ptarmigans] are quite common in the larger valleys, where 

 there is a ranker growth of willows. The stomachs of those I examined of this 

 species contained willow buds and small twigs. 



« Proc. U. S. Nat. Mus.. vol. 13. p. 514, 1890. 



6 Hearne. .Tourney to the Northern Ocean, jij). 41.'5— 415, 1795. 



cNat. Hist. Coll. in Alaska, p. V.V2, 1S87 (1S88). 



tf Bull. 15, U. S. Nat. Mus„ pp. 82-83, 1879. 



