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VOL. XI. | NOTES. 139 
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The head, nape and back of neck were dark green, much 
darker than the mantle. The feathers of the back and 
wing-coverts were distinctly “oil-green’” with darker 
margins, and dark shafts: the flanks dark—greener than 
brown—and the under-surface pale, almost white on the 
chin and upper throat, brown on the neck, and greyish with 
brown mottles on the breast and belly. The bill was dark on 
the upper mandible ; pale—yellowish-brown—on the lower, 
with a yellow patch at the gape. The legs were black or 
nearly black; the iris distinctly emerald-green. When 
the bird stretched a wing and expanded its tail, so that 
the tips of the feathers stood apart, I could distinctly count 
twelve rectrices. 
After looking up the description of the plumage of the 
Shag in various books, the only conclusion that I can arrive 
at is that most writers have had no real knowledge of the 
changes of dress, or how long the bird takes to mature. The 
general idea—though not expressed—seems to be that the 
bird is adult and ready to breed in twelve months ; indeed, 
Sharpe, in his Handbook, says, “ the black plumage is assumed 
in the first spring.”’ 
Mr. Ogilvie-Grant alone amongst the authorities which I 
consulted gives any suggestion of three distinct autumn 
plumages prior to one of spring maturity. 
Mr. W. P. Pycraft, in the British Bird Book—one of our 
recent works—states that in the juvenile plumage “the 
breast is never white,’ but Dresser (Birds of Hurope) describes 
and figures a young bird with a brown back and white breast. 
He says: “chin, upper-throat, and under-parts generally 
pure white, neck brownish-white.”’ This individual, caught 
on the coast of Sicily, is in the Manchester Museum and 
certainly has a white breast. MacGillivray, though not 
entering fully into any changes of juvenile dress, says: “ the 
lower-parts brownish-grey; the throat and part of the 
breast inclining to white.” Is the Sicily bird abnormal, 
or is the first plumage always white on the under-surface ? 
My bird, so far as it was possible to see it, though it 
persisted in keeping its breast more than half turned away 
from me, appeared to agree with Mr. Ogilvie-Grant’s second 
autumn dress, but the under-parts seemed to me to be almost 
white in ground colour. In one particular, however, it 
certainly did not agree, for he says: “Iris pale brownish- 
white,’ and the iris of my bird was distinctly emerald-green 
—as green as in an adult bird. 
Dr. Hartert, in The British Bird Book, comm 3nts upon the 
reluctance of this bird to pass overland, and no doubt during 
