144 A MONOGRAPH OF THE PHEASANTS 



of the young male be traced as surely as in the Impeyans. Clad in a plumage of dull 

 mottled grey and brown, whenever a feather of the body is tweaked out, it is replaced 

 by a scintillating, iridescent plume which glows like the most brilliant jewel among 

 the surrounding dull feathers. In this way we may find birds which are studded 

 here and there with these adventitious feathers, or occasionally a whole patch will 

 mark the place where the bird was perhaps seized by an eagle, or dashed itself against 

 a branch in some sudden agony of escape. We may even tell about what time the 

 damage was done, as after January or February ingrowing feathers have the full 

 colours of the adult, while those which appear in the late autumn are tinged with 

 signs of immaturity. 



Second Year Moult, Male.— When the real moult begins, in the autumn of 

 the second year, there is no delay. Soon every part of the bird shows the startling 

 change, and there is a period when it seems to be almost equally fretted over the entire 

 body, dull mottled brown alternating with brilliant iridescence. 



The primaries begin to fall in regular sequence from No. i outward, the dull brown 

 flight feathers with their marginal buff mottling giving place to the jet-black, 

 immaculate new feathers. At this time, before all the primaries have been dropped, 

 in about fifty per cent, of the individuals, the two juvenile flights, numbers 9 and 10, 

 can be readily distinguished from the others by their narrower, more pointed form, 

 and two small terminal shaft-streaks of buffy white. In other birds (in which, 

 perhaps, their initial start was more delayed) they are exactly similar to the 

 succeeding ones. 



The moult of the secondaries lags somewhat behind the shedding of the primaries, 

 and three or four of the latter are well grown before the first of the secondaries falls — 

 usually the third from the outer. This is succeeded by the fourth and so inward, the 

 outer two being shed about a week or more later. In fact I have examined a large 

 number of specimens in which these two outer secondaries are the last remaining first 

 year flight feathers. As the old feathers are so strongly mottled and barred with buff, 

 the change is even more striking than in the case of the primaries — the new secondaries 

 being like the other flights, dull greenish black. Adventitious growth of rectrices 

 is very evident before the autumn moult of the second year. Such a bird may still have 

 all the first year mottled buffy tail feathers, except one or two which have been torn out 

 in some way and replaced by others with the rich chestnut of the adult ornamented with 

 several broad black bars — a striking pattern which would never normally occur. They 

 are, perhaps, an inch longer than their fellows. The forced growth in such a case must 

 have come when the adult hue was ready, but sufficient of the immature dark pigment 

 left to be incorporated. Practically all wild Impeyans assume their fully adult dress 

 at the second autumn moult, but in captivity birds not rarely retain many traces 

 of immaturity even after this moult. This occasionally occurs in wild birds, and I have 

 seen an individual which, due to some abnormal factor such as malnutrition, has at this 

 moult attained a halfway state of plumage, and for another twelvemonth it must bear 

 upon its plumage white throat frecklings, rufous tips to the coverts, a mottled back and 

 the half-barred tail which deprives it for another year of the wonderful beauty of a cock 

 in full plumage. 



