PROTECTION BY COLOR. 151 



commonly tricked out with yellow and green. In watching 

 them, I have sometimes noticed how much yellow there is in 

 the green of foliage, how they accord with leaves just opening 

 or with leaves just fading. This is scarcely color protection, 

 but it is color harmony, which is much the same thing. 



The dull-mottled coloring of the owls, we may suppose, has 

 less to do with their hunting by night than with their lying 

 still by day, when in shape and color they often much resemble 

 dead and broken branches such as abound in a forest. An owl 

 alighting on the top of a dead stub will seem to be a part of it, 

 he sits so stiff and shapeless, and looks so square-headed. 

 Nearly all the sandpipers, snipe, and other shore-birds are 

 streaked or dotted upon the back with brown and buffy like 

 the light grass stems and the dark background behind them, a 

 coloring which often protects the sandpiper, especially the 

 mother bird upon the nest, from observation. But the plovers, 

 which are nearly related to the sandpipers, have plain-colored 

 backs, so that they come under a different protective device. 

 They are less spotted than the sandpipers, and often have dark 

 bands, bars, or marks about the breast and head that may 

 help to efface the outline. 



When you have opportunity, notice how much the backs of 

 nighthawks and whippoorwills look like some of the dark- 

 spotted, night-flying moths that lie still by day under brown 

 leaves and upon tree trunks. In the same way, these birds 

 that hunt during the hours of dark and twilight, and crouch 

 upon the ground or upon the branch of a tree during the day, 

 closely resemble the surface they alight on. The back of the 

 woodcock is quite similarly mottled. The back and sides of 

 grouse and quail are also protectively colored. 



The outline of a bird is often more readily recognized than 

 a spot of color would be ; we see the familiar line, and infer 



