196 AMERICAN GAME BIRD SHOOTING 
food, but in other parts of the West man interferes but 
little with the abundance of this species. 
This ptarmigan is found in considerable numbers 
above timber line on most of the mountains of western 
America. It does not occur in the Sierra’ Nevada, 
nor in the Cascades south of Washington. It is no- 
where very abundant, though I have seen them, in 
autumn, in flocks of twenty-five or thirty, and recall 
an afternoon when, on Mount Jackson, in Montana, 
two of the party secured twenty-two of the birds. 
Yet, as a rule, they are nowhere very common, a single 
brood often seeming to occupy its own range of ter- 
ritory, which is not encroached on by others. I have 
not seen them in large flocks as mentioned below by 
Mr. Trippe. 
The nest of the white-tailed ptarmigan is built high 
up on the mountain-side above timber line, and may be 
located anywhere among the loose stones and rocks. 
A little depression is perhaps scratched out near a 
patch of grass or weeds, and here the mother bird 
deposits her eight or nine eggs, buff in ground color, 
sometimes spotted with many small reddish or brown 
dots, or, again, peculiarly blotched with larger mark- 
ings of the same color. The nest is usually quite in 
the open, but the grayish mother bird so closely resem- 
bles the stones among which she nests as readily to 
escape observation. Moreover, the confiding nature 
of the bird gives her such courage that she will remain 
on the nest, unscared even by the close approach of 
some great danger. 
