160 BRITISH BIRDS. 



approach within a few feet as they stood utterly unmindful of his presence. 

 They sometimes leave the mud-flats and repair to the drier land ; and are 

 very fond of frequenting the narrow dykes and streams with which these 

 flats are intersected in all directions as soon as the tide has left them. 

 When fired at, the birds often return after flying a little distance. As the 

 season advances they become more wary. 



The adult male Bar-tailed Godwit in breeding-plumage has the general 

 colour of the upper parts dark brown, spotted with chestnut on the crown, 

 mantle, scapulars, and innermost secondaries, and shading into chestnut 

 on the back of the neck and sides of the head ; the wing-coverts 

 are greyish brown, with nearly white edges and dark shaft-streaks; 

 the wings are dark brown, the secondaries and innermost primaries mar- 

 gined with white ; the rump is white, the feathers in the middle with dark 

 brown centres ; the upper tail-coverts and tail are white, barred with dark 

 brown. The general colour of the underparts is rich chestnut, with a few 

 black streaks on the sides of the breast and flanks ; the axillaries, longest 

 under tail-coverts, and under wing-coverts are white, the two latter 

 obscurely barred with brown. Bill dark brown, paler at the base ; legs, 

 feet, and claws black; irides hazel. In the female, the chestnut both on 

 the upper and under parts is paler, and there are ahvays numbers of 

 feathers which are little changed in colour from those of winter plumage. 

 After the autumn moult all trace of chestnut disappears from both the 

 upper and under parts, the lower breast and belly are nearly pure white, 

 and the throat and upper breast are greyish white with dark streaks, the 

 feathers of the upper parts are greyish brown with pale edges and dark 

 shaft- streaks, the wing-coverts, rump, and upper tail-covert: scarcely 

 difi'ering from summer plumage. A very important difference, however, 

 presents itself in the colour of the tail, which is plain ash-grey, slightly 

 marbled at the base *. 



YouDg in first plumage difi'er from adults in winter plumage in having 



* Yarrell appears to have copied Selby in asserting that the tail of the Bar-tailed 

 Godwit was alwaj'S barred, an egregious error which Saunders, apparently misled by 

 Dresser, has failed to correct. The tail of the young in fu-st plumage, and of the adult in 

 summer plumage, is always barred. Adults in winter plumage have plain tails, but those 

 of birds of the year occasionally show traces of bars. It is veiy extraordinary that a 

 blunder of this kind should still be perpetuated, especially as Naumann describes and 

 figures the adult in winter with the terminal half of the tail-feathers plain, and my friend 

 Mr. Charles Murray Adamson had also pointed out the fact as long ago as 1881, in his 

 book, ' Some more Scraps about Birds.' On page 41 he describes a mature female, shot in 

 January, as having the tail plain ash-coloured ; and on page 47 he says that " all mature 

 birds have similar tails, and I think several of the accounts one reads of Black-tailed 

 Godwits having been killed in winter are merely mature birds of the present bu-d." The 

 tail was also accurately described by Hume in 1873 (' Stray Feathers,' i. p. 335), though 

 he mistook the paitially barred tail of the bird of the year for a sign of matuiity. 



