242 SUMMER 



while the whole family of the ducks are very much of a 

 pattern. The young almost exactly resemble their mother 

 when the close season ends, though at the end of August 

 you may without difficulty pick out the cocks, and by 

 November the full male plumage is in evidence. Is the 

 change just a growth and fall up to and down from that 

 ecstasy of energy, palpable in all the being of the birds at 

 spring? or is there a purpose in the particular hues of summer 

 and winter as well? Is the male colour a developing dis- 

 tinction, or a disappearing distinction ? And what can we 

 argue from the colouring of the young ? They are supposed 

 to carry in their feathers or coats the history of the race ; 

 and many young develop the male colours rather late. 

 Men with theories begin to believe that once in all species 

 male and female and young were similar in colour; and that 

 colour, appearing first in the male in spring, developed later. 

 In some cases — the partridge, for example — it is being 

 assumed by the hen as well as by the cock. 



Nevertheless, the summer loss of the ' crest' and 'livelier 

 iris' of spring, most sudden and salient in the ruff and the 

 plover and the dunlin, is rather different from the mallard's 

 collapse into drab colour and weakness of flight. The black 

 grouse or blackcock, when the breeding time is over, falls 

 into as helpless a state as the mallard. He loses a number 

 of his wing feathers and several of his tail feathers simul- 

 taneously, so that flight is quite or nearly impossible, and 

 skulking is the one road of safety. Even the red grouse, 

 our one native game bird, at this season suffers severely 

 in vitality as he alters in appearance, and becomes an early 

 victim of disease — indeed, a much easier victim than the 

 hen which does not go through these abrupt changes. It 

 seems that all these birds which moult at what would seem 

 to be a rather unseasonable hour, suffer in some degree 



