ii 

 a 

 a 



Chap. XV. COLOUR AND NIDIFICATION. 179 



allied species, when sufficiently mature to breed, differ 

 considerably in plumage from the adult males ; but 

 after the second or third moults they differ only in 

 their beaks having a slight greenish tinge. In the 

 dwarf bitterns (Ardetta), according to the same au- 

 thority, " the male acquires his final livery at the 

 " first moult, the female not before the third or Iburth 

 moult ; in the meanwhile she presents an inter- 

 mediate garb, which is ultimately exchanged for the 

 same livery as that of the male." So again the 

 female Faleo jperegrinus acquires her blue plomage 

 more slowly than the male. Mr. Swinhoe states that 

 with one of the Drongo shrikes (Dicrurus macroeercus) 

 the male whilst almost a nestling, moults his soft 

 brown plumage and becomes of a uniform glossy 

 greenish-black ; but the female retains for a long time 

 the white striae and spots on the axillary feathers ; 

 and does not completely assume the uniform black 

 colour of the male for the first three years. The same 

 excellent observer remarks that in the spring of the 

 second year the female spoonbill (Platalea) of China re- 

 sembles the male of the first year, and that apparently 

 it is not until the third spring that she acquires the 

 same adult plumage as that possessed by the male at a 

 much earlier age. The female Bomhycilla carolinensis 

 differs very little from the male, but the appendages, 

 which like beads of red sealin2:-wax ornament the wincr- 

 feathers, are not developed in her so early in life as in 

 the male. The upper mandible in the male of an Indian 

 parrakeet {Falseornis Javanicus) is coral-red from his 

 earliest youth, but in the female, as Mr. Blyth has 

 observed with caged and wild birds, it is at first black 

 and does not become red until the bird is at least a year 

 old, at which age the sexes resemble each other in all 

 respects. Both sexes of the wild turkey are ultimately 



N 2 



