Remarks on the Plumage of Birds. 4-79 



I am now engaged, wherein the changes to which our British 

 birds are subject are described in detail. 



I append a few additional observations, chiefly with a view 

 to elicit exceptive cases, should they happen to have occurred 

 to any reader. 



Mr. Selby, in his British Ornithology, positively affirms 

 that the snipes and woodcocks undergo a double moult, 

 though without altering their genera] appearance to any ex- 

 tent. Of great numbers of these birds, however, which I 

 have examined during the spring months, up to the time of 

 breeding, I could never discern the slightest trace of a change 

 of feather. The present season, I examined seven recent 

 specimens of Scolopax major, obtained in Holland, about the 

 third week in May, and of which the females would certainly 

 have laid in a few days; but which differed in no particular 

 from others killed in October last, and, on minutest inspection, 

 corroborated my observations on the other species. 



In the green hawks, and other Totani, which alter their 

 colours to a certain extent at the approach of the breeding 

 season, I have hitherto failed to detect any appearance of a 

 vernal moult; but, in the little ring plovers, which Temminck 

 confidently asserts to renew their feathers in autumn only, 

 I have found that this applies chiefly, or wholly, to the 

 younger birds; as many (perhaps all) of the older individuals 

 moult to a variable extent in spring. 



On a former occasion, I asserted that the amount of con- 

 stitutional vigour exercises a great influence in determining 

 the extent to which various double-moulting species renew 

 their feathers in spring ; and, continuing those researches 

 which led to that conclusion, it soon became evident that the 

 degree of vigour, in its turn, depended principally upon age. 

 Thus, in the ruffs (a species, by the way, in which the re- 

 tained old feathers undergo no change of colour), the younger 

 specimens put forth but a few new feathers on the upper 

 parts in spring ; and it is only in birds of apparently several 

 years old that the vernal change is anything like complete. 

 It is not generally known, that old females of this species 

 develope some appearance of the ruff; producing glossy 

 purplish feathers on the sides of the neck, to a greater or less 

 extent, which are considerably longer than the wing in winter 

 plumage : such females do not vary in any remarkable degree, 

 and have usually the new plumage on the upper parts black, 

 with a fine purple gloss, each feather beautifully margined 

 with light brown. 



In addition to the instances mentioned at p. 302. of prolific 

 female birds assuming the masculine livery, I can now record 



