CAPERCAILLIE 
Female assuming male plumage. — It is by no means unusual for females 
which have become barren to assume, more or less, the plumage of 
the male. In the most common type the chest becomes metallic -green, 
like that of the male, the head and neck are largely mixed with grey and 
black vermiculated feathers, and there are also some mottled black and 
grey feathers on the back, sides and breast. Females in almost complete 
male -plumage are sometimes met with, and look like small cocks. 
Variations in plumage are uncommon in this country, but partially white 
birds are sometimes seen, and are less rare in Scandinavia and Russia. 
General distribution. — ^The capercaillie is met with in the pine -forests 
of Europe, and Northern and Central Asia, extending in the west to Great 
Britain, and in Scandinavia as far north as lat. 70°, in the east as far as 
Lake Baikal, and northwards to about lat. 67° ; southward it ranges to 
the Pyrenees, Alps, Carpathians, north-east Turkestan, and the Altai 
Mountains. 
Allied species. — In the Ural Mountains a beautiful light -coloured 
capercaillie {Tetrao uralensis), is found. In the male the head, neck, 
mantle and back, etc., are grey, finely mottled with black, the wings 
and shoulder -feathers light reddish-brown, the chest green, and the 
breast and belly mostly white. The female also has the general colour 
of the plumage much paler than that of the female of T. urogallus, and the 
white tips to the shoulder -feathers much wider. 
Although at first sight this splendid capercaillie, by far the handsomest 
of the genus, appears to be very distinct from typical examples of 
T. urogallus, from Norway and Sweden, the writer has examined numer- 
ous birds with the plumage intermediate in colour between the dark 
Scandinavian bird and the light -coloured Ural form. These birds come 
into the London market in considerable numbers, and are believed to be 
imported from some of the more southern provinces of Russia, but the 
exact locality is difficult to ascertain. Though some of these intermediate 
birds have much white on the breast and belly, and are altogether lighter 
than Western European examples, the Ural birds are so much paler than 
the palest of them and so constant in their coloration that they may fairly 
be considered as representing a distinct sub-species. 
Males are occasionally shot in this country with a great deal of white 
on the breast and belly, but this is due, no doubt, to partial albinism. 
Eastwards its place is taken in North-eastern Siberia and the Island 
of Saghalien by an allied species, the slender-billed capercaillie 
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