188 AMERICAN GAME BIRD SHOOTING. 
reaches its favorite summer grounds, about the middle of 
May or the first of June. The young broods appear 
about the last of June or the first of July, their birth- 
place being the open barrens, or the vicinity of some 
stream or tarn. Having comparatively few foes in their 
boreal home, the greater number live to adult age. 
Their food consists of buds, insects, berries, mosses, 
and lichens, the latter two being procured by digging for 
them in the snow. When they are confined to a lichen 
diet their flesh is anything but palatable, but it makes a 
dainty morsel in summer, when they live on berries and 
insects. They are so tame at this season that they per- 
mit persons to come within a few feet of them before 
getting alarmed, and even when flushed, they only 
fly a few yards before settling down again. The 
parents are brave defenders of the chicks, and resort to 
various stratagems to protect them from foes. As soon 
as the broods are able to take care of themselves in the 
autumn, several families unite in one pack, and travel 
southward together, but when they return in spring they 
generally move in small coveys or in pairs, and resort to 
the same ground year after year. The inaccessible 
haunts of this species, like those of the white-tailed 
ptarmigan, are their best protection against foes, es- 
pecially man, for it requires an amount of patience and 
hard work to capture them that few would care to mani- 
fest or endure; hence, they rarely find their way into the 
ordinary sportsman’s bag. It is said that the true 
Lagopus mutus of Europe has been found near Repulse 
Bay and Wollaston Land, but the species seen there 1s evi- 
dently the variety rupestris, which resembles it so closely . 
that few inexperienced persons can distinguish them 
apart. The affection displayed for their young by the 
ptarmigans, the excellence of their flesh in autumn, the 
undaunted courage of the males, which freely endanger 
their lives to protect those under their care, and the 
