Page:Bird-lore Vol 01.djvu/397



Photographing Ptarmigan BY E. R. WARREN, Crested Butte. Colo. With photographs from nature by the author* UR White-tailed Ptarmigan, or 'Mountain Quail,' as it is commonly called in this state, is a bird of such alpine habitat that but few become acquainted with it, especially in the summer season, when it lives at timber-line and higher. In the winter it is somewhat better known, for it then descends to the valleys, driven down by the storms and deep snows, although, as far as I know, never below or out of the snow. At this time they are very noticeable, that is, if one runs across them, for they are pure white, excepting bills and eyes, which are black. At all seasons, so far as I have observed, unless much persecuted, they are fearless of man, and will allow one to approach very closely, so closely that I have actually touched them. The photographs from which the accompanying illustrations were made were taken in the vicinity of Crested Butte, Gunnison county, Colorado. The first of the birds in the summer plumage was taken in 1899 at ^^ elevation of over ii,ooo feet, nearly but not quite tim- ber-line, and in one of our high mountain basins. The birds were in the habit of coming daily, at about noon, to a mining tunnel, for the sake of drinking from a small stream of water which flowed from the tunnel, probably the nearest water they could find. As long as there is snow on the mountains the birds do not go for water. I have seen them eat snow in the summer as well as in winter. There has published the educational value of the camera in the study of birds in nature. Few ornithologists are privileged to see Ptarmigan in their haunts, and. with the exception of the Scottish species, they are never, we believe, confined in zoological gardens. But here we have a series of photographs, which not only gives an excellent idea of the appearance of these birds in life, but graphically demonstrates the im- portance of their marked seasonal changes in plumage, which are technically described by Dr. Dwight in the succeeding article.
 * Mr. Warren's beautiful pictures illustrate perhaps more forcibly than any photographs Bird-Lore