This is Bird Note.

With its rubbery sounding rattles and clownish red eyebrows,

the tarmigan is quite the stand-out northern bird.

And it's particularly well adapted to wintertime in the snowy realms it calls home.

Like Cinderella at midnight, this bird is utterly transformed by winter.

During its autumn molt, the ptarmigan sheds its mottled brown plumage for a cloak of snowy white

and skip the glass slippers. As the winter approaches, the

tarmigan's feet grow feathers. Even the bird's claws grow longer, and that added surface

area means the tarmigan is ready to travel over the snow. It practically has its own set of

snow shoes. If you or I tried to travel across Tarmigan turf in winter,

we'd likely sink into the snow up to our shins, our thighs, or even our hips, but not this bird.

The Tarmigan's genus name, Legapus, is a combination of the Greek words meaning foot and hair.

Like a rabbit, legipus, hair foot.

The name's a nod to another big-footed northerner,

the snowshoe hair.

For more on the tarmigan and other birds we feature,

check out our website, birdnote.org.

For Birdnote, I'm Mary McCann.