Fjeld-riporre, is in summer blackish-brown with grey and rufous markings, the median tail-feathers, abdomen, and most of the wings being white. The back becomes grey in autumn. The female is reddish-buff, barred with black. In winter both sexes are white, with black and white rectrices, and in the male with black lores. Nearly all the so-called Ptarmigan in English poulterers' shops are Willow Grouse. The haunts are on the higher parts of mountain-ranges, where stony ground abounds, but somewhat lower altitudes are sought after the breeding season. The food consists of shoots and berries; the cry is croaking, and best heard in misty weather. From five to ten eggs, with blacker markings than those of Red Grouse, are deposited in a hole scraped in the earth, with little or no lining, the nest being commonly quite exposed, though equally often under shelter of a boulder. Ptarmigan are decidedly difficult to see among the similarly-coloured stones. In Scotland they occur on most of the higher hills from Arran northwards, though no longer in Dumfries and Galloway; while abroad they occupy Northern Europe, with the Pyrenees and the Alps, and possibly Northern Asia. In the lighter _L. rupestris_ the adult male never has a black breast or a grey back in autumn. This form occurs in North Asia and North America, with Greenland, Iceland, and Japan, many local races having been described as distinct species or sub-species; while the larger _L. hyperboreus_ (_hemileucurus_), with a white base to the tail, inhabits Spitsbergen; and _L. leucurus_, with entirely white rectrices–the smallest member of the genus–ranges along the Rocky Mountains from British Columbia to New Mexico. Of fossil forms _Coturnix_ and _Palaeortyx_ occur in the Upper Eocene of the Paris Basin, _Taoperdix_ in the calcareous deposits of Languedoc of the same age; _Palaeortyx_ is again found with three species of _Palaeoperdix_, in the Middle Miocene of France, while _Phasianus_ is not only recorded from {241}this formation, but from the Upper Miocene of Oeningen and the Pliocene of Attica, in the latter of which _Gallus_ accompanies it. _Meleagris_ has been discovered in the Miocene of Colorado, and the Post-pliocene of New Jersey; _Gallus_ in the Pliocene of France, _Palaeotetrix_ and _Pedioecetes_ in that of Oregon; and, finally, bones of _Lagopus_ have been brought to light in the French Plistocene, and those of _Tetrao urogallus_ at Kent's Hole near Torquay and in the caves of Teesdale in England.