190 BULLETIN 50, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



cc. Larger and darker brown of upperparts buckthorn brown; tail averaging 

 over 115 mm., height of bill at base averaging 13 mm. (Great Plains area 

 from north-central Alberla, central Saskatchewan, to (all but extreme 

 western) Montana, the Dakotas, Wyoming, western Nebraska, and north- 

 eastern Colorado) Pedioecetes phasianellus jamesi (p. 196) 



PEDIOECETES PHASIANELLUS CAURUS Friedmann 



Alaskan Sharp-tailed Grouse 



Adult male (autumn). — Forehead fuscous to fuscous-black, the feathers 

 tipped with dark snuff brown ; feathers of the crown and occiput similar 

 but crossed with widely spaced whitish bars and tipped with cinnamon- 

 buff; the pale bars more abundant, less widely spaced on the lateral 

 coronal feathers, and blending into a fairly definite whitish or buffy 

 whitish superciliary stripe on each side; nape like the sides of the crown 

 but washed with pale ochraceous-buff ; "mantle," i. e., interscapulars, 

 fuscous-black broadly barred with white, the more distal bars, especially 

 on the more posterior feathers, washed with pale ochraceous-buff; feathers 

 of sides of neck and of breast similar to anterior interscapulars ; back, 

 rump, and upper tail coverts fuscous-black, broadly but incompletely 

 barred with cinnamon-buff to tawny-olive, the latter color often sparsely 

 vermiculated with fuscous-black, and broadly tipped with pale cinnamon- 

 buff to pinkish buff, darkest on the back and becoming paler on the 

 rump and upper tail coverts ; scapulars and inner median and greater 

 upper wing coverts like the upper back but with the brownish areas 

 more extensive (at the expense of the blackish parts) and each feather 

 with a large terminal white wedge-shaped spot; rest of the upper wing 

 coverts and the secondaries grayish olive-brown externally incompletely 

 and sparsely barred with white, the coverts with terminal white spots 

 on their outer webs, the secondaries completely edged with white on 

 the tips of both webs; primaries grayish olive-brown with white spots 

 on the outer webs ; median rectrices pinkish buff longitudiTially and trans- 

 versely marbled with fuscous-black; the next pair largely fuscous-black 

 tipped with white and with their outer webs mixed wdth white; lateral 

 rectrices white with dusky smudges along the shafts ; circumocular region 

 fuscous-black; lores, subocular stripe, cheeks, and auriculars pale ochra- 

 ceous-buff dappled with dusky ; the dusky markings concentrating on 

 either side to form a fairly distinct inalar stripe ; the auriculars tipped 

 with fuscous-black ; chin and upper throat whitish suffused with pale 

 ochraceous-buff and with many small pale clove-brown spots ; lower throat 

 white, the feathers narrowly edged with dark olive-brown ; breast feathers 

 white with heavy margins of dark olive-brown ; feathers of sides and 

 flanks white barred with dark olive-brown, the more posterior of these 

 feathers with considerable tawmy-olive on their outer webs and with the 

 dark bars darker — clove brov/n to almost fuscous ; upper abdomen and 

 sides of lower abdomen white with a few small dark olive-brown sub- 



