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Show 412 DR. EINAR LONNBERG ON [Mar. 1, a small peasant village, Rasvik, situated in the country parish of Pitea, Government district of Norrbotten, thus not far from the town mentioned. The mother bird of these Riporre specimens was, undoubtedly, a hen of Lyrurus tetrix. She had laid and afterwards hatched her eggs near a jjeasant's house in a small hamlet, consequently the hen and her six chickens were observed almost every day during the summer and autumn of 1901. As soon as the birds got scared they perched in trees as the Black Game does, unlike the Willow-Grouse. When full-grown they were shot, all of them the same autumn. The first four were sold to an innkeeper in the town of Lutea, who, not recognising them hybrid nature, had them plucked and eaten. The last two, however, luckily fell into the hands of Dr. Bjbrkbom, who took care of them and had them mounted. Both these specimens are males shot in the month of October, the one a little earlier than the other, so that it was still in moult and retained some of the feathers of the autumn plumage. These feathers are situated in such a manner that they form a patch behind the eye and on the sides of the occiput, and a broad band on the sides of the lower neck, extending with some scattered feathers on the fore-neck, and are almost exactly like those in the corresponding situation of a young Blackcock just moulting to assume its first black plumage. They are thus barred with light buff and brownish black, the bars being, however, at least partly, a little narrower in the Riporre than in the young Blackcock. There is thus no trace of the rufous of the Willow-Grouse in these feathers. A few scattered scapulars, which are mixed buff and black, have an appearance which may be termed intermediate between that of the corresponding ones of Lyrurus tetrix § and that of Lagopus lagopus °_ , and differs from that of the males of both species. With regard to the pattern, the axillaries of this Riporre specimen approach perhaps more those of the female Willow- Grouse than those of the Grey-hen. With the exception of these feathers, almost every feather of the whole plumage of both Riporre specimens is either more or less white, or is, with slight modifications, like that of an immature Blackcock. The description of the Riporre cock in winter plumage which Oollett has given * is quite correct for these specimens too, and need not be repeated. An analysis of the plumage, however, may not be without interest. The white must, of course, be regarded as an inheritance from the Willow-Grouse father, except in such places where the Blackcock as well is normally white, as on the under tail-coverts, on the wing, &c. The whole upper surface of the Riporre is, with only slight modification, derived from the Blackcock, and this modification consists only in the fact that the fine brown sprinklings and vermiculations on the feathers of the Blackcock (immature or in summer plumage) in the Riporre are * Proc. Zool. Soc. 1886, p. 224. |
