WHITE-TAILED PTARMIGAN. 
Lagopus leucurus. 
Lagopus leucurus peninsularis. 
Winter plumage snow-white throughout; the bill 
and eyes being the only dark spots to be seen. The 
summer plumage is buff, or, later in the season, clay 
color, coarsely barred with black on a pale ground. 
There is little difference between the male and the 
female. The tail is always white. 
In the young the tail feathers at first are not white, 
but are mottled with brownish. They become white 
with moulting, however. 
The sub-species, peninsularis, inhabits the alpine 
mountains of central Alaska, northern Yukon, N. W. 
Mackenzie, south to Cook Inlet, Kenai Peninsula and 
southern Yukon. 
In all America, the especial home of the grouse, 
there is no prettier member of this family than the 
white-tailed ptarmigan. Like all its kind, it loves the 
cold and snow, but, unlike the other American mem- 
bers of the group, it substitutes altitude for latitude 
and is an inhabitant of the lofty mountains of the 
West, from central Alaska and northern Yukon south 
to Washington and New Mexico. Here on the very 
edge of perpetual snowfields, not far from some brawl- 
193 
