TURNSTONE. 15 



eastern coasts are not so suited to their habits as the rocky shores where 

 the birds congregate for the winter. 



The Turnstone is a very gaily coloured bird, its plumage showing strong 

 contrasts of black, white, chestnut, and brown. In the adult male in 

 summer the lower throat and upper breast are black, extending down- 

 wards on each side of the lower breast and upwards in a broad band on 

 each side of the neck, which nearly meets at the nape and branches off in 

 one direction through the cheeks to the base of the bill, and in another 

 across the ear-coverts and through the eye, meeting on the forehead. 

 The crown is striped with black, and the sides of the mantle and the 

 outer scapulars are black. The rump, quills, the central portion of the 

 tail, and the lesser and median wing-coverts are brown. The chestnut is 

 most brilliant on the centre of the upper back and on the inner scapulars, and 

 is more or less prominent on the lower wing-coverts and lower scapulars. 

 This distribution of the colours leaves the forehead, lores, eye- stripe, nape, 

 hind neck, lower back, upper tail-coverts, chin and upper throat, centre of 

 the breast, axillaries, under wing-coverts, and the whole of the underparts 

 below the breast white. Bill black ; legs and feet orange-red, claws dark 

 brown ; irides hazel. The female only differs from the male in having the 

 black portions of the plumage duller in colour, the white on the head and 

 neck somewhat suffused with brown, and the chestnut less brilliant. After 

 the autumn moult the winter plumage is assumed, in which the chestnut 

 and the black feathers are replaced by dark -brown feathers with pale edges, 

 which is also the colour of the crown, nape, and hind neck, the rest of the 

 plumage being nearly the same as that of summer. Birds of the year 

 differ from adults in having the white on the back of the neck suffused with 

 chestnut, and in having the lesser and median wing-coverts chestnut with 

 brown centres. Young in first plumage closely resemble adults in winter, 

 but the general colour is a paler brown, and the entire head, except the 

 chin and throat, is almost uniform brown. Young in down have the 

 upper parts dark grey marked with black, and the underparts shading 

 from grey on the throat to white on the belly. 



