On Eclipse Plumage and Flightlessness.



259



everything—it is long since I felt the loss of a pet so deeply as I

have felt the loss of these two helpless tots.


And, in conclusion, I must be permitted to express a hope

that I shall never again see a Bee-eater in confinement. May

the Bee-eaters be left alone in their natural haunts, and be neither

heartlessly butchered to pander to the vanity of empty-minded

women, nor slaughtered because they kill bees, for they do far

more good than harm, nor brought into captivity as they are not

suitable for cage life, although so admirably adapted for fulfilling

the mission for which they were created—that of making the

world in hot latitudes where noxious insects abound more habit¬

able for man who, in this connection, notwithstanding his vaunted

superiority, is in reality such a miserably helpless being.



ECLIPSE PLUMAGE AND FLIGHTLESSNESS.


By Frank Finn, B.A., F.Z.S., M.B.O.U.


The interesting problems connected with the assumption

of the undress or “eclipse” plumage in some of the duck family,

and the question as to which waterfowl become flightless when

moulting, have been recently under discussion in the Field,

and as the matter is one of much interest for aviculturists,

I should like to offer a few remarks on this subject, having

always paid particular attention to waterfowl, and not to British

species only, to which most observations seem to have been

confined.


With regard to the eclipse plumage of the Pochard, I

recorded the existence of such a phase as long ago as 1901, in

my pamphlet “How to know the Indian Ducks,” where I said

“the male in undress retains much of his full colour, merely

getting a browner head, a dark pencilled grey breast and duller

tail-coverts.” I have observed this change in many specimens,

in Europe as well as in India, and also that a similar one occurs

in the very nearly allied American Pochard or Redhead ( Nyi'oca

americana ) of which a few were recently on view at the Zoo.


In the case of the White-eyed Pochard, however, I have

never seen any assumption of eclipse plumage by the male,



