568. 
086 SYSTEMATIC SYNOPSIS. —GALLINA — ALECTOROPODES. 
L. al/bus. (Lat. albus, white. Figs. 403, 404. ewu0w GROUSE. WILLOW PTARMIGAN. 
Bill very stout and convex, its depth at base as much as the distance from nasal fossa to tip ; 
whole culmen 0.75; bill black at all seasons. ¢ 9, in winter: Snow white; 14 tail-feathers’ 
black, white-tipped; the middle pair (which most resemble and perhaps are true rectrices, hav- 
ing no after-shafts) together with all the coverts, one pair of which reach to end of tail, white ; 
shafts of several outer wing-quills black ; no black stripe on head. @, in summer: The head 
f 
Mon 
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\ 
Lh Manohla Wie 
slate ‘ 
Fie. 403. — Willow Ptarmigan, summer plumage, } nat. size. (From Brehm.) 
and fore parts rich chestnut or orange-brown, more tawny-brown on back and rump; the richer 
brown parts sparsely, the tawny-brown more closely, barred with black ; most of the wings and 
under parts remaining white. similar, wholly colored excepting the wings, the color more 
tawny than in the @, and more heavily, closely, and uniformly barred with black. Length 
15.00-17.00; wing about 8.00; tail 5.50. Arctic and Northern N. Am. from ocean to ocean, 
into the northernmost U. 8. Eggs very heavily colored, with bold confluent blotches of intense 
burnt sienna color, upon a more or less reddish-tinted buff ground. All the eggs of birds of this 
family are colorless when the shell first forms high in the oviduct, acquiring pigment as they 
pass down; in the ptarmigan, where the coloring is so heavy, an egg cut from the pigment- 
