236 BULLETIN 135, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



through the transparent covering. During the first day the legs of the little 

 cranes were large and soft, but by the next morning they had shrunken and 

 hardened considerably. The "knees" were visibly enlarged, the skin had lost 

 its reddish tinge and become of a shiny, slatey color. The young showed inter- 

 est in food shortly after hatching, but they would not pick up boiled egg yolk 

 themselves until a tapping noise was made with the fingers on the floor, where- 

 upon they at once began to eat. Their high pitched "peep" had a gurgle in it, 

 a miniature of the rolling "r-r-r-r-" in the trumpet note of the adult. 



Plumages. — My remarks on this subject are based on a study of 

 a considerable series of little brown and sandhill cranes of various 

 ages and refer to the plumage changes of the two birds combined, 

 as the two are, apparently, exactly alike in this respect and are, prob- 

 ably, only subspecifically distinct. The small downy young crane is 

 completely covered with thick, soft down and is very prettily colored. 

 The color is deepest in the centers of the crown, hind neck and back 

 and on the wings, where it is "chestnut" or "burnt sienna" ; it shades 

 off on the sides to "ochraceous tawny" and on the throat and belly 

 to dull grayish white. These colors fade somewhat as age advances, 

 I have seen no specimens showing the change into the juvenal 

 plumage. 



In the juvenal plumage the crown, which at first is fully feathered, 

 is " tawny" ; the head and neck are washed and mottled with " tawny " 

 and "cinnamon" and the under parts are mottled with the same 

 colors; the back is almost solid "hazel " or " tawny " and the scapulars 

 and wing coverts are heavily washed with these same colors. 



This brown plumage is worn through the first fall and winter, but 

 the crown and lores become partially bare before spring. A partial 

 prenuptial molt, involving the contour feathers, scapulars and some of 

 the wing coverts, but not the flight feathers, produces a fresh, brown 

 first nuptial plumage, in which I think that some birds breed. 



At the next complete molt, the first postnuptial, from September 

 to December, most of the adult gray plumage is assumed, but many 

 of the feathers in the neck, back, scapulars and wing coverts are still 

 brown. During the second winter, or at the second prenuptial molt, 

 most of the brown plumage is replaced by new gray feathers, " mouse 

 gray" to "pale mouse gray," on the head, neck, and body; but some 

 of the old brown wing coverts are still retained in the second nuptial 

 plumage. At the next, complete, postnuptial molt, which is not 

 finished until December, the young crane becomes fully adult, at an 

 age of 23^ years. 



Adults have a complete molt from August to December; the flight 

 feathers are molted in August, but the molt of the body plumage and 

 wing coverts is not finished until December. The prenuptial molt, 

 if any, must be very limited; it probably involves only a renewal of 

 some of the contour plumage. 



