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The necessity for the moult entails many risks, 

 for it exposes the bird to peculiar dangers ; yet no 

 single bird is abandoned during this period, none left 

 without away of escape. The geese, as we have seen, 

 moult most rapidly and hence are most helpless, but 

 there are few of their enemies that they cannot 

 avoid by keeping to the water and grassy marshes; 

 the hawks, that hunt by wing, moult so slowly that 

 they do not feel a loss of power ; while such birds as 

 the quail and grouse, that always depend in part for 

 protection upon the blending of their colors with the 

 colors of their environment, seem especially so pro- 

 tected during the moulting season. A grouse blotched 

 with light patches, where the dark-tipped feathers 

 have fallen away, may so melt into the mottled color 

 scheme of its background as to escape the sharpest 

 eye. 



Such a rapid, wholesale moult as in the case of the 

 geese would be fatal to land birds. Instead, their 

 primaries, or large wing feathers, drop out one or two 

 at a time and symmetrically from the two wings. 

 Oftentimes it is the two inner primaries that go first, 

 then the others following one at a time, the outer- 

 most last. This order varies, as in the kingfisher. 



144 



