KELLOGG 'S PTARMIGAN 227 



the belly, and by " tawny " or " ochraceous-tawny " feathers on the 

 breast and flanks, more finely barred or peppered with black or 

 dusky; the upper parts are also more tawny with finer barring or 

 peppering and with more black than in June birds. Breeding 

 females have no peppered feathers and no white on the belly. A 

 juvenal bird, collected at the same time and place, is like the adult 

 female, but the colors are duller. 



LAGOPUS RUPESTRIS KELLOGGAE Grinnell 



KELLOGG'S PTARMIGAN 



HABITS 



The name kelloggae. " Montague rock ptarmigan," was first 

 applied by Dr. Joseph Grinnell (1910) to a bird that he described 

 as a new subspecies from Montague Island, Prince William Sound, 

 Alaska. But a later and more extensive study by Harry S. Swarth 

 (1926) has shown that the specimens on which Doctor Grinnell's 

 name is based are merety variants toward dixoni of a race, distinct 

 from rupestris, that inhabits the whole of northern and western 

 Alaska. He says of the characters and distribution of the race he 

 now calls kelloggae: 



The notable feature of this bird is its bright ruddy tone of coloration, a 

 character that is evident in both sexes and in all stages of the summer plum- 

 ages. As compared with rupestris, the general tone of color throughout is 

 brighter and more reddish, and there is notable restriction of the dark areas 

 on individual feathers. 



The extreme manifestation of this race is reached on the northwestern and 

 northern coast of Alaska, it occupies practically the whole of the Alaskan 

 mainland, and it extends eastward of Alaska along the Arctic coast for some 

 distance. In the latter region the duller color of specimens from Baillie 

 Island, Coronation Gulf, and Bathurst Inlet, is to be interpreted, to my mind. 

 as indicative of intergradation with rupestris. 



Southeastward there is intergradation again with rupestris as occurring in 

 British Columbia, about at the Alaska-Yukon boundary line. A series of seven- 

 teen skins from the vicinity of Eagle (U. S. Biol. Surv. coll.), in the upper Yukon 

 region, demonstrates such intergradation satisfactorily. Certain selected skins 

 from this series and from the British Columbia aggregation are hardly to be 

 distinguished, and none of the Eagle specimens shows the extreme of ruddiness 

 that is seen in Alaskan birds from more northern points. The Eagle series as 

 a whole, however, certainly belongs with the northern Alaska subspecies rather 

 than with rupestris. On the southern coast there is apparent intergradation 

 with dixoni, as shown by skins from Kodiak Island, Seward, and Prince William 

 Sound. 



According to the latest revision of this species by P. A. Taverner 

 (1929), as recognized in the new American Ornithologists' Union 

 Check List, the range of this form is extended eastward along the 

 arctic coast and islands to western Greenland, north of Disco. 



