WILLOW PTARMIGAN. 45 
l)orio(ls of famine aiv I'vcr recurring among the natives, and these 
l)ir(ls friMiiKMitly stand between them and starvation. It rears hut 
one brood in a season. nestin<]: on the ground early in rJune and hiyin<^ 
from T to 12 eggs. By the middle of August the young are nearly 
grown. In the northern part of its range the willow ptannigan is 
a summer resiiU'nt only, and at the approach of winter most of th<' 
l)ir(ls migrate in large flocks, sometimes numbering a thousand or 
more, southward or inland to a region of scattered trees or bushes. 
Ernest Thompson Seton, (pioting from llutchins' manu*»cript con- 
cerning observations at Hudson Bay in 1782, says that over 10,000 
ptarmigans were caught with nets at Severn from November to 
April." The birds are so tame, especially in winter, that their cap- 
ture is easy. Like all other gallinaceous birds, ptarmigans require 
gravel for milling their food, and in winter deep snow makes this 
hard to procure. The natives, taking advantage of the birds' neces- 
sities, bait their nets with gravel, and sometimes catch as many as 
800 at one spring of a net.^ E. W. Xelson writes of encountering 
flocks of several thousand white ptarmigans in Alaska in midwinter, 
and says that the whirring of their wings as they rose sounded like 
the roll of thunder and seemed to shake the ground. He reports 
that the birds are snared and shot in great numbers by both the 
Alaskan Eskimos and the Indians.^ The flesh is not so palatable as 
that of many other game birds, and is decidedly dry and often 
bitter when the bird feeds on willow buds. The flesh of old birds 
is dark colored, but that of the young is wdiite and delicately flavored. 
FOOD HABITS. 
Study of the food of the wallow ptarmigan unfortunately has 
been slight, for only five birds were available. Their food was 
entirely vegetable. Three shot in January in Labrador had eaten 10 
percent of berries and 90 percent of buds, more than half the buds 
being willow. One stomach contained about 300 willow-flower buds. 
The two other birds were collected in December in Labrador and had 
eaten willow buds exclusively. Though the data are so scanty, the 
results agree with those of other students. Ludwig Kumlien, for 
instance, says : ^ 
They [willow ptarnilffansl arc quite common in the larger valleys, whore 
there is a ranker growth of willows. The stomachs of those I examined of this 
species contained willow huds and small twigs. 
a Proc. U. S. Nat. Mus., vol. 13, p. 514, 1890. 
*Hearne, Journey to the Northern Ocean, pp. 41:^-41."). 170.'>. 
^Nat. Hist. Coll. in Alaska, p. VV2, 1887 (1888). 
d Bull. 15, U. S. Nat. Mus., i)p. 82-83, 1871). 
