BIEDS. 



143 



senses, have heard them as they came^down the wall of the mountain? 

 She sat there all unconscious now, while they, looking thin and 

 shorn compared with the- shaggy white goats, stamped and kicked 

 at the flies and put down their big-horned heads. Presently the three 

 started over the edge of the cliff, and after a few- moments a ewe, 

 with shorter, straighter horns came down and followed along after. 

 All this time the old ptarmigan with feathers puffed out sat on her 

 rock about ten feet from me. Once a little head peeped out from 

 among the feathers, but all was quiet, so quiet that I could hear the 

 w^ater trickling through the grass. When well rested the downy 



Photograph by E. R. Warren. 



Fig. 45. — Pfarmigun iu winter. 



chicks came out and began to peep and run around again, one of 

 them coming within five or six feet of me without question from his 

 mother, for we were old tried friends now. 



But what were they finding to eat ? The dryas was higher up on 

 the mountain. As I questioned, I discovered one of the little tots in 

 a bed of dwarf willows whose pinkish stamened catkins stood about 

 an inch from the ground. Making a quick run at a catkin the little 

 fellow gave a jab at the fuzzy anthers! Droll little chicks! Appar- 

 ently their mother approved of their diet if she did not understand 

 dietetics, for as they went busily about among the flowers and grasses, 

 she left them to their own selection. But it was high noon and time 

 to go back to the chalet. "When I returned in the afternoon a storm 



