Summer Plumage in Pyromelana oryx. 477 



Touracos to regain the scarlet colouring in their feathers 

 after it had once been washed out, and it would be equally 

 impossible for disease or death to dull the plumage of birds, 

 as it undoubtedly does. 



In September 1^06, Major Horsbrugh sent me a male 

 example oi Pyromelana oryx in summer plumage. This bird 

 has regularly moulted each year at the approach of winter, 

 and very early in the year has commenced to reassume the 

 summer plumage. The change is extremely gradual, begin- 

 ning sometimes as early as the end of January and not 

 perfectly completed until late in May. This year the bird 

 became ill in the first week of April and died on the night 

 of the 5tli-6th, exhibiting the transition plumage from the 

 winter to the summer dress to perfection : the feathers 

 of the eyebrow-streak are yellow, those of the chin and 

 cheeks are tinted with yellow inclining to orange, the nape 

 is rapidly assuming its orange colouring, but at the sides 

 and back it is still suffused with the brownish winter 

 colouring, the brown plumage of the mantle and centre of 

 back are washed with reddish orange and the feathers of the 

 lower back are more or less tipped to all appearance with 

 bright golden-orange, but in this case a moult has probably 

 taken place, although the white flank-feathers are partly 

 tipped with the same colour; some of the buff-brownish 

 feathers of the breast are already fringed with black. 



An examination of this bird in its transition plumage 

 should be enough to convince even the most sceptical that 

 the assumption of the summer plumage is sometimes attained 

 by a change of colour in the feathers, and not by a partial or 

 complete moult of the feathers. 



I still have an example of Cyanospiza cyanea in a some- 

 what similar transition plumage and, in spite of Mr. Dwight^s 

 contrary opinion, am perfectly satisfied that it also assumes 

 its summer colouring in the same manner. If the brown 

 plumage were moulted out in the spring and replaced by the 

 blue and green of the summer dress^ why should a bird which 

 dies in the middle of its change exhibit a winter plumage 

 washed over with the summer colouring ? Is it conceivable 



