WESTERN HENSLOWS SPARROW 783 



Both parents brood and feed the young. Food was brought to one 

 nest Hyde was watching about one hour after the first egg hatched. 

 As he saw no egg shells carried away from the nest, he assumed the 

 parents ate them. Diuing their first day of life the young are fed 

 about once ever 2 hours. Feedings increase as the young grow to as 

 many as 10 per hour at the age of 7 to 8 days. The adults carry 

 away fecal sacs at irregular intervals and sometimes eat them. The 

 young leave the nest on the 9th or 10th day after hatching. 



Plumages. — The natal down which D wight (1900) calls smoke 

 gray, Hyde (1939) terms "pale buffy gray." He found it distributed 

 on a bird 4 hours old in "A superciliary patch of about two tufts on 

 each side; a patch on the back of the head; one on the middle of the 

 back; one lateral to the femur; a humero-scapular tract of two tufts; 

 and a patch on the posterior margin of the ulna. * * * At four days 

 of age down was still prominent. At six days the superciliary and 

 alar tracts retained conspicuous tufts." He describes a 6-day-old 

 nestling whose juvenal "feathers were almost completely unsheathed, 

 except on the forehead, the crown, and underneath the eye" as follows: 



"Sides of crown black, center of crown and nape all around light 

 olive-brown, contrasting with the pale rufous back feathers, which 

 have black centers; edge of wing sulphur; remiges fuscous, the pri- 

 maries very narrowly margined along outer edges and tips with pale 

 light brown, the secondaries similarly margined with a slightly deeper 

 brown; tertials black, broadly margined with pale cinnamon; scapu- 

 lars and wing coverts fuscous margined with pale rufous. Upperparts 

 sulphur yellow, sides strongly washed with vinaceous. The feathers 

 of the anterior part of the sides of the breast have narrow fuscous 

 streaks." 



Birds in the completed juvenal plumage also show a characteristic 

 "fused" barring (present also on some adults) on the tail feathers, 

 which are shorter than those of adults. This plumage is replaced in 

 a post-ju venal molt by the fii'st winter plumage, in which the birds 

 are similar to adults but have deeper buff-colored underparts. The 

 post-juvenal molt and the complete post-nuptial molt of the adults 

 appear to be essentially finished on the breeding grounds before 

 migration. Kumlein and Hollister (1951) thus vividly describe the 

 molting adults: "During the latter part of August and September the 

 adults especially are in a condition of such extreme moult as to be 

 almost unable to fly, there being many days when not an individual 

 can boast of even a single tail feather." 



Dwight (1900) states that both the first and the adult nuptial 

 plumages are "acquired probably by a partial prenuptial moult con- 

 fined chiefly to the head and chin." This still needs verification for, 

 as Dwight continues, "In species so much affected by wear it is not 



G46-737 — OS — pt. 2 13 



