WAYS OF TINAMOU 269 



Like the pileated, this tinamou deposited but a single 

 egg, and we found males, attended by one three-quarters 

 grown chick, beginning to incubate a new egg. Such devo- 

 tion would be hard to equal. The egg was discovered on 

 June 17, and it contained an embryo of about four days. 



In a breeding female the iris was amber ; the mandibles 

 black, the lower yellowish- white toward the base; the legs 

 and feet warbler-green. The length varied from 285 to 

 325 mm., and the birds weighed about three-quarters of a 

 pound. The food was dominantly seeds and nuts of various 

 kinds, some like acorns, others resembling cherries in color 

 and pits. Two birds only had eaten insects, small beetles 

 and wire worms. 



Judged by the day-to-day shooting for the pot by the 

 Indian hunter, the average proportion of the sexes was eight 

 males to each female, and without exception, the latter were 

 in much finer plumage. Curiously enough, however, all the 

 chicks and half -grown birds were females. 



The difference between the true juvenile and the adult 

 plumage is abrupt and striking. In the first plumage, the 

 head is chestnut rather than black, and the feathers of the 

 upper parts instead of being black, cross-barred with buff, 

 are rufous, with black centers and white tips. Beneath, the 

 reverse is true and in place of the plain rufous and white of 

 the old bird, we find warm buffy feathers barred with black 

 and white. 



A few weeks later another molt takes place. The head 

 becomes black as in the adult, but the body plumage is inter- 

 mediate between the juvenile and the adult. This molt does 

 not include the wing feathers which change abruptly from 

 juvenile to adult pattern. In this wing molt the primaries 

 are replaced regularly from within outward. The seventh 

 and eighth secondaries fall almost simultaneously, and from 

 these the molt proceeds both outward and inward. Both 

 juvenile and adult primaries are dark colored, but the sec- 

 ondaries show very marked changes in the two plumages. 



