COLOURS AND PATTERNS OF BIRDS 109 



glories of their mates. The hens of different species are much more 

 alike, so alike that it requires attention and expert knowledge to 

 distinguish them, whilst the poorest observer could be in no doubt 

 as to the specific distinction of the cocks. The chicks in their first 

 plumage are always very much more like the females and like the 

 corresponding stages in other pheasants, and here again it requires 

 an expert to distinguish them. An even more startling case of 

 brilliant males and dull females is that of the birds-of-paradise. The 

 fantastic extravagances of their plumes, the jewelled splendour of 

 their eyes and the riot of colour in their plumage far surpass the 

 most glowing imagination of the artists who combine all the shining 

 products of the loom and the most curious dyes of the chemist to 

 compose the stately robes of emperors. But all this exuberance is 

 lavished on the males. The females have to be content with dingy 

 garbs of mottled brown. The young birds are so like the females, 

 and so like one another, that it is often difficult to determine the sex 

 and the species until the adult state has been reached. Ducks and 

 drakes are another familiar instance, but whether the differences 

 between the brilliancy of males and females be small or great, the 

 chicks resemble the duller hens. 



The likeness between the chick and the duller sex occurs even in 

 those rare and curious cases in which the females are more brightly 

 coloured than the males. Adult cassowaries have a deep black 

 plumage, but the naked skin of the head, neck and legs is often 

 coloured in brilliant and fantastic ways, the coloration being much 

 more brilliant in the females, and in this case the young birds 

 resemble the males. In some of the curious little button quails, or 

 hemipodes, the sexes are alike, but in most of them the females are 

 decorated with reddish collars and other conspicuous patches and 

 marks, whilst the males are more dully coloured. The chicks in their 

 young plumage resemble the males. The female painted snipe of 

 Africa and Asia has a brown head with ruddy marks on the sides of 

 the face and round the neck, whilst the back is brownish-green with 

 dark flecks and bright golden-yellow " eye " markings. The male 

 is a duller bird with almost no trace of the reds and golden-yellows 

 that light up his partner. The young birds are like the males. In 

 the so-called grey phalarope, a plover-like bird which occasionally 

 visits England in spring and autumn, but which breeds in the far 

 north, the female is conspicuously brighter in her breeding plumage. 

 The breast and under parts are bright chestnut in colour, whilst the 

 head, back and upper part of the wings and tail are glossy black, the 



