BIRDS OP NORTH AND MIDDLE AMERICA 129 



web the same, but the outer web largely white, and the remaining pairs 

 white narrowly and rather faintly edged with brownish mottlings ; in the 

 wing only the two outer primaries are white, the remainder dark hair 

 brown, the secondaries edged with dusky isabelline vermiculations. 



Juvenal plumage (sexes alike). — Similar to the first autumn plumage 

 but with the top of the head mottled and barred with buff, white, and 

 black, and a number of feathers on the back and rump having large blackish 

 and whitish blotches; chin and upper throat unspotted white; iris dark 

 horn; bill black; toes brownish gray, soles greenish; claws gray, tips 

 pale brownish. 



Downy young. — Center of crown and occiput cinnamon-brown bordered 

 with black, forehead and lores white with black spots; sides of head 

 white with a black line through the eye and a somewhat broken blackish 

 malar stripe ; center of hind neck, posteriorly widening to include the 

 interscapular region, sepia; broad middle of back and rump to tail pale 

 cinnamon brown barred and laterally margined with blackish brown; 

 scapulars and wings cinnamon-buff barred and mottled with dark sepia; 

 rest of upperparts dirty pale huffy white to grayish white; underparts 

 pale grayish white, washed with huffy on the breast and faintly so on 

 the abdomen; sides and flanks mottled with sepia and cinnamon-brown. 



Adult male.—Wmg 164-188 (174.2) ; tail 86-104 (96) ; exposed cuh 

 men 10.4-14.1 (12.4) ; tarsus 30.5-33.4 (31.6) ; middle toe without claw 

 23.8-25.4 (24.6mm.).3« 



Adult female.— Wing 155-179 (168) ; tail 84-92 (88.4) ; exposed cul- 

 men 10.7-14.4 (12.3) ; tarsus 29.8-32.6 (31.5) ; middle toe without claw 

 23.6-26.3 (24.9 mm.).^^ 



Range. — Resident above timber line (Alpine-Arctic Zone) of the 

 Rocky Mountain area from northwestern Mackenzie and adjacent Yukon 

 (head of Coal Creek, Ogilvie Mountains, La Pierre House; Nahanni 

 Mountains), all of mainland British Columbia and central Alberta south 

 to the northern border of the United States (nw. Washington — Skagit, 

 Puget Sound). In British Columbia it has not been recorded from the 

 coast ranges nearest the coast, but is known from the Cascades ; absent 

 in the Queen Charlotte Islands ; replaced by an allied race in Vancouver 

 Island. In northern British Columbia it probably descends into the 

 lowlands occasionally in winter. ^^ 



Type locality. — Rocky Mountains, latitude 54° N. 



Tetrao {Lagopus) leiicurus Swainson, in Swainson and Richardson, Fauna Bor.- 

 Amer., ii, 1831 (1832), 356, pi. 63 (Rocky Mountains, lat. 54° N.).— Nuttall, 

 Man. Orn. United States and Canada, Land Birds, 1832, 612; ed. 2, 1840, 

 820, part ("lofty ridges of the Rocky Mountains"). 



^^ Twelve specimens from Alberta and British Columbia. 

 ^Twenty-four specimens from Alberta and British Columbia. 

 '*' According to Brooks and Swartli. 



