176 AMERICAN GAME BIRD SHOOTING 
made short flights. Long before the snow disappeared 
the birds had commenced to assume the dark plumage 
of summer, the head and neck changing first. The 
birds were now very noticeable against the snow. The 
males fought with much energy. After the young 
had been brought off the males disappeared. 
When startled in winter the birds often fly a short 
distance, and then, alighting on the snow, remain 
crouched there, perfectly motionless, so that they are 
extremely hard to see. 
As I have often noticed with the white-tailed ptarmi- 
gan, the willow ptarmigan, when the wind is blowing 
fiercely and the snow driving, will often alight on a 
drift and quickly scratching a hole will crouch in it, 
thus protected from the wind and the drifting snow, 
which, however, may sometimes quite cover them over. 
In the summer of 1899, while the Harriman Alaska 
expedition was in Yakutat Bay, some of the members 
who were strolling up a ravine back of the sealing vil- 
lage of the Indians, came upon a female ptarmigan 
with half a dozen young. The young ones did not at 
once hide, and one of them was caught in the hand. 
The mother was anxious and uneasy for her little ones 
and walked about within three or four feet of us, and 
when the young one was caught she flew close about the 
captor. When walking on the ground she clucked 
like a setting hen, but with a deeper note; and after 
her young had been released she called to them, warn- 
ing them to remain hidden, with the same note that a 
domestic hen uses to warn her chickens that she sees 
