218 BULLETIN 1(52, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



for a Longer period and much more rapid. The flesh of this .species is better 

 than that of the Willow Ptarmigan and is much sought for as food. The best 

 time to hunt this bird is early in the morning when the wind is calm and a 

 moist snow is falling. The birds are then sluggish and dislike to rise to the 

 hill-tops. 



There is not much more to be said about the habits of this ptarmi- 

 gan, which apparently do not differ materially from those of the 

 mainland rock ptarmigan. This form is much closer to the main- 

 land form in appearance and habits than it is to the other Aleutian 

 forms. It is essentially a bird of the mountains and foothills. It is 

 tame enough where it is not molested, but it soon becomes sophisti- 

 cated where it is hunted persistently. On the mountains back of 

 Iliuliuk Village on Unalaska Island, where we collected a few speci- 

 mens, we found it a really sporty game bird. It usually flushed at 

 long range, with loud clucking notes, and flew very swiftly for a long 

 distance, often across some deep ravine, where a long hard walk was 

 necessary to flush it again. The man who makes a good bag under 

 such circumstances earns his birds. 



LAGOPUS RUPESTRIS ATKHENSIS Turner 



TURNER'S PTARMIGAN 

 HABITS 



The four forms of ptarmigan found on four of the more central 

 islands of the Aleutian Chain, atkhensis on Atka Island, townsendi 

 on Kiska Island, chamberlaim on Adak Island, and sanfordi on 

 Tanaga Island, seem to me to be sufficiently different from their 

 nearest neighbors, nelsoni on the east and ever w an n i on the west, 

 to warrant recognizing them as four subspecies of a species distinct 

 from rupestris. They are all somewhat larger than the mainland 

 rock ptarmigan, with larger and heavier bills, and their eggs are 

 decidedly larger. They are birds of the lowlands, living on the 

 low, rolling hills, grassy plains, and sand hills near the coast; where- 

 as the rock ptarmigan, as well as nelsoni and evemianni, is essen- 

 tially a bird of the mountains and moss-covered foothills, coming 

 down to the lowlands only on the arctic tundra. The dark colors 

 of the mountain forms match their habitat, as well as the light 

 colors of the lowland birds match theirs. The Aleutian Islands 

 appear to be the summits of a submerged mountain chain, which 

 at one time may have formed a land bridge between Asia and North 

 America. It seems likely that the central portion of the chain maj 

 have subsided first, isolating the central islands long before the 

 eastern and western islands were separated from the two continents. 

 This might have given the birds on the central islands a much longer 

 time to differentiate, while the birds on the two ends of the chain 



