BIEDS OF ETHIOPIA AND KENYA COLONY 59 



lores practically naked. The anterior parts of the cheeks are like- 

 wise bare but posteriorly they are covered with whitish down, the 

 covering increasing in density toward the auriculars. The entire 

 body is densely coated with white wholly down through which the 

 quills are appearing on the wings, tail, and interscapular region. 

 On the upper side of the head the down is particularly long and 

 the terminal barbs quite hairlike in their free prolongations. The 

 claws and bill are black. 



There has been some doubt as to whether the darkest birds were 

 Juvenal and the light tawny ones adult or vice versa. Hartert^ 

 worked out the sequence of plumages and concluded that the dark 

 brown birds are adults and that it takes five or six years to achieve 

 the dark plumage. Zedlitz ^ came to similar conclusions as a result 

 of his study. The late Doctor Mearns felt, however (as expressed 

 in his scattered manuscript notes), that the reverse was true; namely, 

 that the dark birds were year-old birds and that they took several 

 years to acquire the light tawny plumage. However, the wing quills 

 growing out in the nestling are light brown like the remiges of the 

 tawny birds — a clear indication that Hartert and Zedlitz are correct 

 in their statements. The condition that obtains in this eagle is there- 

 fore the reverse of the situation in the golden eagle where the imma- 

 ture birds are very dark, almost black, and the older ones lighter 

 in color. 



The nestling plumage is followed by a complete postnatal molt 

 which brings on the juvenal plumage. This molt takes place while 

 the birds are in the nest and starts at about two weeks after hatching 

 (to judge by the size of the nestling examined). The remiges, some 

 of their upper coverts, and the interscapulars are the first feathers 

 of this plumage to appear, and are quickly followed by the rectrices. 

 The juvenal plumage is tawny brown or pale coffee brown, more or 

 less uniform, but slightly lighter on the abdomen than elsewhere. 

 The shafts of the feathers of the underparts are slightly darker than 

 the vanes and appear as faint median streaks of darker brown. 

 Hartert writes that the throat is somewhat lighter than the rest of 

 the underparts in this plumage. This I am unable to confirm in 

 raptor but I have seen examples of typical rapax in which it holds 

 good. The remiges are fuscous brown or brownish black, the inten- 

 sity of the color being quite variable. 



According to Hartert this plumage fades and becomes paler and 

 lighter, and, in no great length of time, becomes entirely pale brown- 

 ish yellow, almost whitish. This undoubtedly does occur, as a male 

 from Dire Daoua, Ethiopia (U.S.N.M. 243610) is in this very light 



^Vogel der pal. Fauna, pp. 1095-1096. 

 •Journ. f. Ornith., 1910, pp. 379-382. 



