NOVITATES ZOOLOGICAE XXIV. 1917. 7 



are quite definite and apparently are to be interpreted in terms of difference 

 in phase of plumage according to age. The description given by Saunders refers 

 to the fully adult bud in its true nuptial plumage-pliase ; the description I have 

 detailed of the Tuskar bird is referable to a bird in a younger jilu7nage-phase. 

 It may represent the adolescent male plumage-phase, acquhed by partial 

 moult in the early sprmg (about February or March), of the first year, and 

 worn during the ensuing summer. Should the bird not breed at this age, then 

 the phase of plumage it has assumed falls into line with that worn at a corre- 

 sponding age by several species of wading-birds, e.g. Sanderling, which I have 

 proved do not all breed in their first year, yet the plumage acquired is 

 so like the nuptial plumage that I have designated it the nuptialoid or 

 pre-nuptial plumage-phase.* If then the plumage-phase of the Black-eared 

 Wheatear from Tuskar be adolescent, it is curious to find that the moult is not 

 quite comparable to what takes place in the Common Wheatear when acquiring 

 its adolescent plumage, which is worn at a corresponding age ; for in the case 

 of the latter bird the rule is that none of the wing-coverts are rerietved. To this 

 rule, however, after examining a large series of specimens, I have seen many 

 exceptions — that is to say, cases in which some of the wing-coverts were renewed 

 but not on so extensive a scale as has taken place in the Black-eared Wheatear 

 in question. 



Dr. C. B. Ticehurst in his interesting papers on the subject of plumage- 

 changes points out that in the case of the Common Wheatear when acquiring 

 its adolescent plumage, normally none of the wing-coverts are renewed, but 

 " sometimes the innermost of the greater coverts and rarely also the innermost 

 secondary are moulted." f Though in my experience other wing-coverts besides 

 these are not uncommonly renewed, the occasional moult of some of the short 

 wmg-feathers is not by any means of a stereotyped character ; albeit at best 

 it is a desultory process, and the possibility of its being in part adventitious 

 rather than being correlated strictly with the onset of maturity, must not be 

 at once dismissed. It is held that in the assumption of the adolescent and 

 subsequent adult nuptial plumages the rectrices of the Common Wheatear are 

 not renewed. If this be the rule also in the case of the Black-eared Wheatear, 

 then the renewal of two of these feathers in the Tuskar bird has been adventitious, 

 that is to say they have replaced two which have been accidentally pulled out, 

 or otherwise shed. In support of this view I may say that at light-stations I 

 have frequently come across migrants of various species in which the tail was 

 imperfect, and which, from the distribution of the moult, bore evidence that the 

 renewal of the feathers was quite adventitious. In regard to the black flight- 

 feathers assumed by the adult bu:ds in nuptial-plumage, it is interestmg to find 

 that they are often in a very much better state of preservation than are the 

 brown ones assumed by the birds in the adolescent plumage. This leads one 



* Vide my papers on "Migratory Movements of Certain Shore-birds on Dublin Coast," read 

 before the British Association, DubUn meeting, September 1908, and published in exlenso in the 

 Naturalist, February lat, 1909, pp. 83, 84, 85 ; also on " The Pre-nuptial Plumage in Calidris are- 

 naria," read before the British Association, Winnipeg meeting, August 1909, pubhshed in the 

 Report ; and on " Semination in Calidris armaria" read before the British Association, Sheffield 

 meeting, August 1910, pubhshed in the Report; and on "The Vernal Plumage-changes in the 

 Adolescent Blackbird and their correlation with Sexual Maturity," read before the British Associa- 

 tion, Portsmouth meeting, August 1911, and published in the Report. 



■f " Sequence of Plumages in British Birds," British Birds, vol. iii. 1909-10, p. 392. 



