Plumage and its Meaning 



Marsh birds, such as snipe, bitterns and corn-crakes, are 

 amongst the most remarkably protected of all birds, as far 

 as plumage is concerned. Flecked and striped as they 

 are with alternate dark and light shades of colour, they 

 harmonise in a wonderful manner with the green and 

 russet-brown grasses and sedges which they haunt. The 

 common bittern we call him common to distinguish him 

 from other bitterns, though, as a matter of fact, he is nearly 

 extinct in Britain presents, probably, the most remark- 

 able example of protective colouring in all birdland. His 

 plumage, as befits his habits, is exceptional amongst the 

 herons. Sulking in reed-beds, he is well clothed for the 

 life he has chosen. His breast is a pale fawn striped with 

 brown. When he wishes to escape detection, he raises 

 his head aloft and points his beak to the sky, so that 

 his striped breast is well exposed. In this position he 

 remains motionless, and it would be a keen eye indeed 

 that could say certainly which was the breast of the 

 bittern, which the russet-brown herbage. 



On the moors the same tale is repeated. The red 

 grouse, a bird which never ranges beyond the confines 

 of Great Britain, with his mottled red-brown coat, 

 harmonises exactly with the ling' and heather of his 

 native moors ; and well he knows it, for when surprised 

 by the roadside or on grassland, where he often goes to 

 sun himself, his first impulse is to reach the heather, which 

 matches his plumage so well that the risk of detection is 

 much lessened. 



Marvellous are the changes of raiment which the 

 ptarmigan assumes to suit the ever-changing seasons. As 

 one writer has stated, the bird seems to be in a chronic 

 state of moulting. " In the spring the ptarmigan is 

 clothed in a dress of dark brown mottled with yellowish- 

 brown tints in beautiful harmony with the mosses and 

 lichens. In autumn the bird changes this dress for one of 

 pale grey vermiculated with black ; or rather it is slowly 

 changing colour all the summer through with the changing 



