582 SYSTEMATIC SYNOPSIS — GALLING — ALECTOROPODES 
variegated with blackish -brown, reddish -brown, and grayish-brown, the pattern smallest on the 
rump and lower back, where the blackish is mostly in sharp-angled stars ; the reddish most con- 
spicuous on the upper back, and both the lighter colors everywhere finely sprinkled with blackish. 
Wing-coverts like the upper back, but with numerous conspicuous rounded white spots, one on 
the end of each feather. Crown and back of neck nearly like the back, but in smaller pattern, and 
the markings mostly transverse. An illy-defined white area on each side of the neck, over the 
tympanum, and slight whitish stripe behind the eye. Throat fine light buff, usually immac- 
ulate, but sometimes finely speckled 
quite across. Under parts white, more 
or less tinted with buif toward the 
throat: the breast with numerous regu- 
lar dark-brown U-shaped spots, one 
on each feather; similar but smaller, 
sharper, and fewer such spots thence 
scattered over most of the under parts, 
only the middle of the belly being left 
unmarked. Long feathers of the sides 
under the wings matching the upper 
M'ing-coverts nearly under wing-cov- 
erts and axillaries pure white, not 
marked; flanks with bars or U-spots 
of dark brown. Legs grayish-white, 
unmarked. Quills of the wings fus- 
cous; outer webs of the secondaries 
with equidistant, squarish, white or 
tawny spots, the secondaries tipped 
and imperfectly twice or thrice barred 
with white, and gradually becoming 
Fig. 398. -Head of Sharp-tailed Grouse, nat. size. (Ad sprinkled with the varied colors of the 
nat. del. E. C.) , , , i . 
back, so that the innermost of them are 
almost precisely like the greater coverts. Four middle tail-feathers variegated, much like the 
back ; others white, or grayish-white, on the inner webs, the outer webs being mottled ; a few 
under tail-coverts spotted, the rest white ; upper tail-coverts nearly like the rump. Iris light 
brown ; bill dark horn-color ; part of under mandible flesh-colored ; claws like bill ; toes on 
top light horn-color, the soles darker. Length, 18 or 20 inches; extent 24 to 30; wing 
8 to 9 ; middle tail-feathers 4 to 6 ; shortest tail-feathers (outennost), about li ; tarsi, 
2 inches; middle toe and claw about the same; culmen of bill about f ; gape of bill 1 to li; 
depth of bill at base ^ or rather less. Pullets, before first moult : Crown bright brown, varied 
with black. Sharp white shaft-lines above, which, with a black area on each feather, contrast 
with the fine gray and brown mottling of the upper parts. Wing-covcrts and inner quills 
with whitish spots. Several inner tail-feathers with whitish shaft Ihies, and mottled Avith 
blackish and brown. Lower throat and breast %vith numerous dark brown spots; sides 
similar, the markings lengthening into streaks. Bill brown above, pale below. This lasts 
till the September moult is comjileted. Chicks hatch dingy yellow, mottled on the crown, 
back, and wings with brown and black. The Pin-tail Chicken inhabits the western portions of 
Minnesota, a small part of Iowa, all of Dakota, thence diagonally across Nebraska and Kansas 
to Coloradt) in the Laramie and upper Platte regions ; thence westward in suitable country to 
the Sierra Nevada and Cascade Ranges ; northern limit to be conventionally established along 
the N. border of the U. S., beyond which it shades into the true phasianellus. In fine, this is 
the prairie chicken of the whole Northwest ; usually occurring where C. cupido does not, the two 
