Rock Ptarmigan

Rock Ptarmigan exhibit unique territorial rituals during the spring, where potential conflicts are typically settled through elaborate displays rather than physical confrontations. Males engage in parallel walking, neck stretching, tail fanning, and vocalizing to establish boundaries without actual combat. Territory sizes can greatly vary. Males perform flight song displays, soaring high and descending in a dramatic fashion while singing to attract mates. Courtship involves expressive plumage and vocal displays to entice females, who select a mate after inspecting multiple suitors within a brief period. While males can be polygynous, females show less aggression towards each other and usually do not change mates after choosing. Monogamous pairs form close bonds, with the male protecting the nesting female. Some males take advantage of territorial defenses to mate without courtship forcibly. Only females incubate eggs while males leave territories post-incubation to form small flocks. Females with young may join forces in crèches. Post-breeding and molting, rock Ptarmigan migrate in flocks, occasionally in mixed age and sex groupings, traversing vast waters and sometimes in darkness. During nonbreeding seasons, males abandon territorial behavior, reinitiating it upon returning to breeding grounds in spring.

The rock ptarmigan is a sedentary species which breeds across arctic and subarctic Eurasia and North America (including Greenland) on rocky mountainsides and tundra. It is widespread in the Arctic Cordillera and is found in isolated populations in the mountains of Norway, Scotland, the Pyrenees, the Alps, Bulgaria, the Urals, the Pamir Mountains, the Altay Mountains, and Japan—where it occurs only in the Japanese Alps and on Mount Haku. Because of the remote habitat in which it lives, it has only a few predators—such as golden eagles—and it can be surprisingly approachable. It has been introduced to New Zealand, South Georgia, the Kerguelen Islands, and the Crozet Islands. The small population living on Franz Josef Land in the Russian High Arctic overwinters during the polar night and survives by feeding on rich vegetation on and underneath high cliffs where seabird colonies are located in summer. During the last ice age, the species was far more widespread in continental Europe.

Not globally threatened.