HOW HE CHANGES HIS CLOTHES 27 
feather. Suppose they have feathers of black, 
with gray on the outside edges. All winter the 
gray shows and the birds seem to have gray 
coats. But in spring the gray edges wear or fall 
off, and the black shows, and then they look as 
if they had come out in new black suits. It is 
as if you should take off a gray overcoat and 
show a black coat under it. 
There is another interesting thing about birds’ 
dress. Some of them look like their mates, the 
father and mother birds so nearly alike that it is 
hard, sometimes impossible, to tell them apart. 
But when that is the case, you will notice that 
the color is not very gay. If the father wears a 
bright-colored suit, the mother does not look like 
him. 
For this reason the little mother is not too easily 
seen when she is on her nest. If the goldfinch 
mother was as bright as her mate, everybody 
who came near would see her on the nest, and 
some animal might take her, and leave the young 
birds to starve to death. That is probably why 
mother birds dress in such dull colors. 
When birds live on the ground, or very near 
it, in most cases both of the pair wear the dull 
colors, so they will not easily be seen. Wrens 
and sparrows and many others are so. But birds 
who make their nests in holes, or under ground, 
