BIRDS OF ETHIOPIA AND KENYA COLONY 49 



30 birds; Yebo, June 20, 20 seen; Karsa Barecha, June 21, 30;. 

 Malata, June 22, 30 seen; Chaffa villages, June 23-25, 14 birds; 

 Lake Rudolf and country to the southeast, July 5-12, 70 birds 

 observed ; Indunumara Mountains, 47 seen ; plains at base and south 

 of Endoto Mountains, 45; Er-re-re, July 25, 20 birds; Le-se-dun^ 

 July 26, 20 seen ; Malele and region to the south for about 30 miles, 

 July 27-29, 16 seen; Northern Guaso Nyiro River, July 31 to August 

 3, 14 birds ; Lekiundu River, August 4-8, 14 seen. 

 While at Bodessa, Mearns wrote that — 



* * * this is much the finest of the vultures. I have never seen a flock 

 of them together. They often visit the camps singly, or in pairs, often select- 

 ing a different tree from the other species; but the two smaller species (Neo- 

 phron and Nccrosyrtes) often insist upon keeping their company; and in shoot- 

 ing them I have once killed a Neophron and once a Necrosyrtes at the same 

 shot. They usually visit camp once or twice daily to see what's doing, but 

 do not sit around all day like the Necrosyrtes. 



NEOPHRON PERCNOPTERUS PERCNOPTERUS (Linnaeus) 



Vultur percnopterus Linnaeus, Syst. Nat., ed. 10, p. 87, 1758: Egypt. 



Specimens collected: 



Female adult. Dire Daoua, Ethiopia, November 28, 1911. 

 One young unsexed. Dire Daoua, Ethiopia, December 2, 1911. 

 One female adult, Dire Daoua, Ethiopia, December 3, 1911. 

 One female immature. Dire Daoua, Ethiopia, December 8, 1911. 

 One male adult (foot only). Dire Daoua, Ethiopia, February 

 20, 1912. 



The acquisition of the white adult plumage is a very gradual 

 process in the Egyptian vulture. Erlanger ^^ has worked out the 

 sequence of plumages in detail and to his account I can add only a 

 few intermediate steps. The change as he gives it is as follows: 

 The plumage of the young bird is brown; the light plumage of the 

 adult first appears on the rump, back, and upper wing coverts; then, 

 in somewhat older birds, on the entire underparts and the nape ; the 

 next stage being one in which the entire bird is almost uniform dirty 

 gray. Then, at the next molt the white feathers of the adidt plum- 

 age appear, replacing the dirty gray ones. The specimens in the 

 United States National Museum indicate that in the transition from 

 the brown immature plumage to the grayish subadult stage, the light 

 grayish feathers appear first on the rinnp while the back and upper 

 wing coverts are still covered with the browm feathers of imma- 

 turity. From the rump the molt spreads to the back, and the upper 

 wing coverts do not begin to molt until the replacement of the 

 feathers of the back is well advanced. The molt of the upper wing 



ssjourn. f. Ornith., 1904, p. 3 5:3. 



