During our walk around Murphy Dome, Casey noticed a group of large round snowballs on a windswept clearing, which turned out to be a flock of ptarmigan. These are rock ptarmigan, distinguishable from willow ptarmigan by the all white winter plumage. The three birds in this photo are female. Males have a black stripe that extends from the eye to the beak. It is not uncommon to see large flocks of ptarmigan grazing on the buds of dwarf birch around open tundra in the winter. In the spring, flocks disperse as males begin defending territories and females choose a mate with the best territory. Eggs are laid in April and hatch roughly three weeks later. Virtually everything up here eats ptarmigan, including humans, so I was surprised at how easy it was to simply walk up to them for this photo.
Canon EOS 60D, Canon EF 70-200mm f/4L USM + 1.4x, ISO-800 f/8 @ 1/1000 sec
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