THE WARBLERS. 193 



Young. Both males and females are alike in having the 

 cap rusty-coloured, therein resembling the old female. The 

 back is more olive-brown than in the old birds, and there is 

 no grey on the neck, which is coloured like the back. There 

 is considerable doubt as to the way in which the young male 

 gains his first full black-headed plumage, and Mr. Seebohm 

 mentions his having secured a specimen in Heligoland, on the 

 2nd of October, which had a black head, but with every 

 feather edged with rusty-brown. Such specimens are not un- 

 frequently shot in the winter quarters of the species, and if, as 

 must undoubtedly be the case, the Blackcap, like other 

 Warblers, goes through an entire spring moult, the blackish 

 head would be worn through the first winter, and the black 

 cap assumed in the following spring by a moult, or, as Nau- 

 mann declares, by a partial change of feathers. This is, 

 however, by no means the invariable method of passing from 

 the young plumage to that of the adult, for there is, in the 

 collection of the British Museum, a young male caught at 

 Lancing on the i3th of August, which is in full moult, and has 

 nearly assumed the perfect black head of the adult, without 

 any brown-tipped feathers. The birds which exhibit the last- 

 named peculiarity may be those of later broods. 



NOTE. The black cap of the male, and the rufous cap of the female 

 distinguish the Blackcap from all the other Warblers, except the Orphean 

 Warbler, which also has a black head. As already stated the grey throat 

 of the Blackcap will always distinguish it from that species. In the 

 wing the fourth and fifth primary-quills are equal and longest, and the 

 second primary is a little longer than the sixth ; the first, or bastard, 

 primary, extends about 0-15 inch beyond the primary coverts. 



Range in Great Britain. A summer visitor, found throughout 

 England and Wales, but becoming rarer in Scotland, visiting, 

 however, the northern parts and the Orkneys and Shetland 

 Isles on the autumn migration, but not breeding, as a rule, 

 beyond the Firths of Clyde and Forth. In Ireland it also 

 nests, and appears to be more or less sparingly distributed. 



Range outside the British Islands. Pretty generally distributed 

 throughout Europe, during the summer ranging north to 66 

 in Scandinavia, in Russia to 62, and in the Ural Mountains 

 to 57 N. lat. In the collection of Dr. Slovzow, at Omsk, 

 is a specimen said to have been obtained in the neighbour- 

 i o 



