. Important American game birds; their ranges, habits and the hunting . h Columbia and the United Statessouth to northern New Mexico. The Kenai white-tailed ptarmigan is confined to Alaska. The com-mon white-tailed ptarmigan is the more southern This is a bird of the sky-line, the hoar frost and the snow. Mottled as the rock tripe in sum-mer, white as the snow in winter, it depends upon its protective coloring to hide it from its Colorado it nests in May at an altitude of 11,000 feet. It is considered the champion fool amongland birds. Many a mountain climber in the north has
. Important American game birds; their ranges, habits and the hunting . h Columbia and the United Statessouth to northern New Mexico. The Kenai white-tailed ptarmigan is confined to Alaska. The com-mon white-tailed ptarmigan is the more southern This is a bird of the sky-line, the hoar frost and the snow. Mottled as the rock tripe in sum-mer, white as the snow in winter, it depends upon its protective coloring to hide it from its Colorado it nests in May at an altitude of 11,000 feet. It is considered the champion fool amongland birds. Many a mountain climber in the north has picked the mother bird off her nest as if shewere a sitting hen, and set her down nearby, with only a complaining protest on her part. The spe-cies is so boreal and clothed so like a snow owl in down from beak to claws that warm weather is itsbane. A female was found sitting comfortably on her nest in half an inch of ice-water. When theMay sunshine strikes the birds on their mountain heights they throw themselves into pools of snow- 49 IMPORTANT AMERICAN- GAME BIRDS. BAND-TAILED PIGEON See page 5* water and lie there panting. Meanwhile the chill mountain air sets the human watcher winter they scoop little holes in the hard snowdrifts to escape the awful wind or descend into thetimber where they subsist on willow buds, birch catkins, and other vegetation. In pursuit of the snow grouse the tenderfoot unused to Alpine work in the thin, clear mountainair, will soon find his lungs and heart pumping distressfully and his limbs weak and wobbly, but thosewho overcome the mountain weariness or sickness will be well repaid by the vast and wonderful pros-pect, even if they fail to find the ptarmigan. Any blunderer with a gun can kill them if he has thecourage to climb the mountains, and a sharp eye to find them; but where they have been much huntedthey may lead him a fearful chase, running fast, rising beyond gunshot and flying far. In such a casethe hunting of the ptarmigan
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