VOL. XV.] SUKFACE-FEEDING DUCKS. 131 



tail-feathers with their bhint shaft-points from which the 

 down has dropped. 



By a moult including all the head, body and tail-feathers, 

 but not the remiges. the yoimg female assumes her second 

 juvenile plumage ; in most specimens this is complete by the 

 end of November of the same year, but some birds assume it 

 a month or more before. In the early spring of the next year 

 a partial moult takes place by which some scapulars and flank 

 feathers are renewed, later the innermost secondaries are 

 moulted and in some specimens a tail-feather or two is renewed. 

 Thus the yovmg female ten to eleven months old has acquired 

 its first breeding (nuptial) plumage, this being a mixture of 

 second juvenile and full adult breeding plumage. Birds of 

 northern origin seem ordinarily to acquire nuptial feathers 

 to a smaller extent than breeding birds from more southern 

 latitudes, e.g., Denmark, whence specimens may be seen 

 having a first nuptial plumage almost or quite indistinguishable 

 from that of a fully adult bird. During the summer, fading 

 and abrasion of the light edges of the feathers give the bird 

 a very dark appearance. In August generally (in Denmark) 

 the remiges are shed all at once and the bird becomes for a time 

 flightless, at the same time going into its first post-nuptial — 

 the so-called eclipse — plumage, which is very much like the 

 second juvenile plumage, in fact, so much so, that in many 

 cases only dissection will prove whether the bird is an adult 

 or a young bird in second juvenile plumage. This post-nuptial 

 plumage lasts until the bird in the early spring of the following 

 year moults into the first complete, or second nuptial plumage, 

 which is as a rule browner, richer in colour than the first 

 nuptial plumage (see above) and generally fully acquired 

 when the bird is twenty to twenty-three months old. After 

 this it has only two annual moults, one complete in summer, 

 and another in spring, which does not include the remiges, 

 which are accordingly only moulted once. 



Male. — After the downy stage the young male gets the 

 first juvenile plumage, from which it commences to moult 

 into first nuptial plumage, showing however during this 

 moult traces of a second juvenile plumage, the feathers of 

 which only stay for a short time, and then they drop off. 

 Some 3^oung males show even in their first juvenile plumage 

 feathers that seem to belong to a more advanced plumage — 

 somewhat similar to the nuptial, or better post-nuptial, being 

 very coarsely vermiculated or rather barred ; as, however, the 

 ordinary juvenile feathers are always predominant, it seems 

 reasonable to suppose that the second juvenile plumage of 



