66 BULiLETIN 113, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 



usually stands guard near the nest while the female is incubating. 

 The young leave the nest after a few days and become quite lively ; 

 they are expert at hiding under whatever shelter they can find, often 

 lying fiat in some slight hollow with the eyes tightly closed. Kumlien 

 (1879) says that he "had an opportunity of seeing how these young 

 hopefuls are instructed in egg sucking. The parent carried a duck's 

 egg to the nest and broke a hole in it, and the young one just helped 

 himself at his leisure. After the young are full-fledged these birds 

 are eminently gregarious, and are often seen feeding in considerable 

 flocks." The young are voracious feeders and become very fat, when 

 they are much esteemed by the natives for food. 



Plumages. — The j'^oung chick is covered with long, soft, thick down, 

 grayish white above and almost pure white below, tinged with buff on 

 the throat and breast. The back is clouded or blotched with " smoke 

 gray," and the head and throat are distinctly marked with numerous 

 large and small spots of " fuscous black," the number and extent of 

 the markings varying in different specimens. Before the young bird 

 is half grown the Juvenal plumage begins to appear, about the last of 

 July, showing first on the wings, scapulars, flanks, and back. 



Doctor Dwight (1906) has given us a full and accurate account of 

 the molts and plumages of this species. Of the juvenal plumage he 

 says: 



August or early September finds birds wholly in the brown barred or mottled 

 plumage, of which the flight feathers and the tail are retained for a full year, the 

 body plumage and some of the lesser wing coverts being partially renewed at 

 two periods of moult, the post juvenal in November or later and the preuuptial 

 beginning often as early as the end of February. 



The first winter plumage only partially supplants the juvenal, 

 "chiefly on the back. The overlapping of the post- juvenal and pre- 

 nuptial moults obscures the question of whether all young birds pass 

 through one or two moults during their first winter, but the evidence 

 is in favor of two. Before the time of the prenuptial arrives birds 

 have faded out a good deal and are often quite white in appearance, 

 with the brown mottling very obscure. The paler of the drab pri- 

 maries apparently fade to white in some cases." At the first post- 

 nuptial molt in August and early September, when the bird is 14 

 or 15 months old, a complete change takes place, producing the 

 lighter but still mottled plumage of the second year. There is, how- 

 ever, great individual variation in the purity of this plumage, some 

 birds still retaining mottled feathers like those of the first year and 

 others ac(]uiring advanced signs of maturity. Doctor Dwight (1906) 

 says further: 



In a very few birds brown mottled feathers still predominate, although birds 

 with fairly developed gray mantles, white tails sprinkled with brown, and 

 having pale ecru-drab or white primaries are perhaps tJie most usual type of 



