288 BULLETIN 16 7, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



So far their graceful flight had been marked with almost adult ease ; but both 

 betrayed inexperience when trying to alight and capsized awkwardly upon the 

 ledge. 



The young are watched and cared for by their parents long after 

 they have left the nest, guarded and fed, or taught to hunt for them- 

 selves. 



Plumages. — The downy young ferruginous roughleg is covered 

 with short, white, woolly down, but long and silky on the crown and 

 tinged with gray on the crown, wings, and rump. The succeeding 

 down, preceding the acquisition of plumage, is long, thick, and 

 pure AA'hite. The flight feathers are the first to appear, when the 

 young bird is less than half grown, followed closely by the plumage 

 of the back, scapulars, and wing coverts, and then by that of the 

 breast. 



In fresh juvenal plumage the upper parts are from "clove brown" 

 to "bister", edged on the head and back with "ochraceous-buff", on 

 the scapulars wnth "tawny", and on the wing coverts with "russet"; 

 the under parts are white, heavily suffused with "warm buff" on the 

 upper breast and tibiae and suffused elsewhere with paler buff; 

 there are narrow black shaft streaks on the sides of the breast, large 

 blackish or dark sepia spots or patterns, edged with "tawny", on the 

 flanks, and small scattered spots on the tibiae and tarsi ; the tail is 

 basally white, but largely "wood brown" and "mouse gray", the 

 inner webs mainly white, and with about four indistinct dusky bars. 

 This plumage is worn throughout the first year with no change 

 except by wear and fading, all the buff and most of the rufous tints 

 disappearing by wear or fading out to white. 



The second-year plumage is acquired by a complete molt, prob- 

 ably prolonged during spring, summer, and fall. In this the upper 

 parts are much like those of the adult, with very broad edgings of 

 "cinnamon-rufous" or "Sanford's brown", broadest on the scapulars 

 and darkest on the wing coverts; the under parts are much like 

 those of the juvenal, except that the brown tibiae are acquired, vary- 

 ing from "tawny" to "russet", either heavily and thickly barred with 

 black or more faintly with dusky; the belly and flanks are also more 

 or less tinged, especially on the flanks, with "tawny" or "hazel" and 

 more or less irregularly barred with black or duslcy; the darker- 

 colored birds may be the young of one of the dark phases: tlie tail 

 has no barring and is largely whitish, mottled or clouded with gray, 

 or extensively washed with "tawny" or "orange-cinnamon" on the 

 outer webs. 



Mr. Cameron (1914) says that the young bird requires four or five 

 years to attain its fully adult plumage, but I should say that at the 

 end of the second year the young bird molts into a plumage that is 

 practically adult, although from then on the under parts continue 



