218 
THE CONDOR 
Vol. XVII 
and at dawn relocate them before breakfasting, and continue that careful watch 
until the following night, unless in the mean time he tracked the female bird 
to the nest. Durand and the other man, Barton, were to pursue exactly the 
same tactics when they located further birds. 
This plan was followed out on Wednesday, June 23, but being personally 
under the weather that day I did not accompany them, but promised to and 
did follow them up the next morning. The results were as follows : In the 
morning near the head of the glacier they first found a cock bird in approxi- 
mately the same spot we had once before seen him, and, on another occasion, 
had seen a pair together but had failed to find their nest. Durand, feeling some- 
what irritated at this, deviated from my instructions to leave one man, to the 
extent of all three of them stopping, unloading their outfits, receding a hun- 
dred or so yards and there separating fifteen or twenty feet apart and thor- 
oughly combing the ground again well up the slope of the comparatively steep 
hill on one side, which was bare of snow, down to the glacier on the other side 
and continuing this for approximately two hundred yards up the gulch beyond 
Fig. 73. Female White-tailed Ptarmigan upon her nest; photographed June 21, 
1915. 
where the male bird was discovered and still remained ; this, however, without 
results. They then came together to discuss further methods and while so 
doing, as on the previous occasion, one of them pointed down to the female bird, 
within six or eight feet of where they stood, on, the nest, and upon raising her 
by inserting the hand beneath her from behind disclosed five eggs. This nest, 
located alongside a jagged rock about two feet high, was but a bare pretense 
for one, with just a trifle of dry grass and six or eight feathers of the bird in 
the bottom, and a small bunch of dry grass pushed to one side, with which to 
cover the eggs when she left them. The bird was replaced and left on the nest. 
On following the party up next morning, I first found Olson, about a mile 
beyond the nest just described, lying on his blankets and watching a pair of 
ptarmigan which he had located about noon of the previous day and camped 
with as instructed. After lying down and talking with him awhile, he having 
told me of seeing, while watching the pair, several ptarmigan fly across a gulch 
below him just before dark the previous evening and also shortly after daylight 
