Notes on the Plumage of North American Birds 



SIXTY-THIRD PAPER 



By FRANK M. CHAPMAN 



(See Frontispiece) 



Red-winged Blackbird (Agelaius phceniceus; Figs. 1-3). In accordance 

 with the law among birds that when the male is brighter than the female, 

 the young of both sexes more nearly resemble their mother than they do 

 their father, there is no essential sexual difference in the plumage of nestling 

 Red-winged Blackbirds. Both the juvenal male and the juvenal female are 

 brownish black, margined with buffy or rusty above and broadly streaked 

 with black and buff below. This plumage is worn for more than a month after 

 the bird leaves the nest, and by a complete molt is succeeded by the first 

 winter dress. The male (Fig. 2) for the first time acquires the red epaulet; 

 it is, however, not so bright as in the fully adult bird, and is mottled with 

 black. The rest of the plumage is black, but is widely margined or tipped 

 with buff or rusty above, and by buff or whitish below. As the season advances 

 most of these margins and tips wear, or fall off, and by May or June the bird 

 is jet-black with but few traces of the fringes which so distinguish its winter 

 costume. Indeed, so far as the body plumage is concerned, the bird born the 

 preceding year is much like one that is two or more years old, but its epaulet 

 still lacks the brilliancy of the adult and possesses the black mottlings of the 

 first winter plumage. Mature plumage is therefore not acquired until the 

 first postnuptial, that is, second fall molt. The bird is then in second winter 

 plumage, which resembles that of the first winter (Fig. 2) but has the rich, 

 red, unspotted shoulder-patch of the. adult. Again by wear the rusty tips 

 gradually disappear and by the following May (the second of the bird's life) 

 we have the bright black, scarlet, and buff -shouldered bird shown in Figure 1 

 of the frontispiece. 



The young female in the postjuvenal or first fall molt passes from one 

 streaked plumage to another, and there is, consequently, much less difference 

 between a young and an old female than between a young and an old male 

 Fully mature females (Fig. 3) have the 'shoulder' tinged with red, and the 

 throat with reddish orange instead of yellowish, and after these marks are 

 acquired they undergo but little seasonal change in color. 



The Red-wing is found from Canada to Mexico and the West Indies, from 

 the Atlantic to the Pacific. As might be expected, it exhibits considerable 

 variation in this extended territory, its general size, the size and shape of the 

 bill, and the color of the female being the characters most affected. These 

 local or geographical variations have in a number of instances been described 

 as races or subspecies. Doubtless no two ornithologists would agree on the 

 number of these subspecies which are deserving of recognition by name. 

 The Committee on Classification of the American Ornithologists' Union has 



(89) 



