File:Birds and nature in natural colors - being a scientific and popular treatise on four hundred birds of the United States and Canada (1913) (14749909114).jpg

Identifier: birdsnatureinnat05chic (find matches)
Title: Birds and nature in natural colors : being a scientific and popular treatise on four hundred birds of the United States and Canada
Year: 1913 (1910s)
Authors:
Subjects: Birds -- North America
Publisher: Chicago : A.W. Mumford, Publisher
Contributing Library: American Museum of Natural History Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

View Book Page: Book Viewer
About This Book: Catalog Entry
View All Images: All Images From Book
Click here to view book online to see this illustration in context in a browseable online version of this book.

Text Appearing Before Image:
Birds, gives thenotes of Mr. Dennis Gale, who studied the habits of two broods of White-tailedPtarmigans; one containing seven and the other five chicks. He believed that themales took no part in the parental cares, but the mother birds were very devoted.He says: There was a disposition, clearly proven with the chicks of both broods,to hide when the hen signaled danger; but some of the older ones flushed andflew at least fifty yards. The females were very tame and would not flush; infact, they could not be induced by mild treatment to leave the place where theyoung had hidden. They walked around me so close that I could have touchedthem with my hand, and showed a marked concern for their broods, clucking ina manner very similar to our domestic hen. No description will more graphically portray the characteristics of the White-tailed Ptarmigan than that ))reparcd l)y Mr. T. M. Tri))pe for Dr. Coues Birdsof the North-\\cst. Mr. Trippe studied this l)ird in the mountainous regions of 776
Text Appearing After Image:
0>0 HHITE-TAILED PTARMIGAN Winter plumatcr(Lagopus leucurus).* t Life-size. Colorado ami \^Titl^ as t<illo\vs: Ilic Wliitc-taikil Itarmi^aii is a \crv ahimdantliird on tlu- main raii),t, liviiij^ entirely al)o\f tiinhcr line the year around, excepttlurinj; the severest part of winter, when it descends into the linihcr for siielterand food, occasionally strajjjjlinj, as low as ten thousand feet. It begins to changecolor alxnit the middle f)f March, when a fiw s;Kcks of hlackish-hrown begin toappear in the plumage oi the oldest males ; but the change is very slow and it islate in .\j)ril before there is much black visible, and the close of May, or early inJune, before the summer plumage is perfect. The ptarmigan builds its nest in thelatter part of June. The nest—which is .-dmost always i)laced on or near the sum-mit of a ridge or spur, many hundred feet above timber-line—is merely a depres-sion in the ground, lined with a few straws and white feathers from the mothersbreast.

Note About Images