i 3 6 JOTTINGS ABOUT BIRDS. 



chestnut-brown and tipped with white, the males 

 not being so rufous on the rump, upper tail coverts, 

 and tail as the females, and the white tips are purer 

 and more clearly defined. This plumage is carried 

 until the following spring, when sexual differences 

 become still more marked, the males losing all 

 traces of chestnut, but retaining the white tips ; in 

 the females, however, the chestnut becomes more 

 brilliant, but the white tips are lost. After the 

 next autumn moult but few traces of immaturity 

 are to be seen, and these much more pronounced 

 in females than in males ; whilst after the following- 

 spring moult the adult stage is reached. It might 

 here be remarked, that the Cuckoo moults twice in 

 the year. The Cuculus hepaticus of Latham is the 

 female Cuckoo in the rich liver-brown or " hepatic " 

 stage of plumage assumed after the first spring 

 moult. The reason birds in this stage are so rarely 

 obtained in the British Islands is, that they do not 

 breed in this plumage, and only exceptionally 

 migrate so far north. ^ It has been said that males 

 also assume this hepatic phase, but after careful 

 examination of a great number of specimens, I 

 flatly contradict the statement. 



