RED JUNGLEFOWL 209 



' with the well-established acquisition of the cock's plumage in sterile hens, shows that 

 these cells exercise a very important suppressive effect on the secondary sexual characters 

 of the male bird. 



Perhaps the most interesting thing about the moult of Red Junglefowl is the 

 partial eclipse plumage into which the cock enters immediately after the breeding season. 

 The general facts are the same as those given under Gallus sonnerati (p. 245). The long, 

 red and yellow hackles are shed, while the remainder of the worn plumage remains intact. 

 They are at once replaced by short, dusky brown or black feathers, not like the hackles 

 of the hen, but very similar both to the hackles of the juvenile plumage and to the 

 normal feathers of the mid and lower mantles, which in the full-plumaged cock are 

 concealed from view by the overlapping, long lanceolate hackles. This eclipse plumage 

 has sometimes a gloss of purplish or purplish blue. The long central tail feathers are 

 sometimes shed simultaneously with the hackles, more often they fall out a little later. 

 In two or three months the regular annual moult begins and the eclipse hackles are shed 

 with the rest of the plumage, and in the autumn the cock is seen in all his resplendent 

 colours, ready for another year of virile life. 



No good reason has been advanced to explain this curious partial moult. In ducks 

 the cause for the assumption of the dull female garb during the period of helplessness, 

 consequent upon the simultaneous shedding of the flight-feathers, is very apparent. 

 But this time of the year presents no unusual dangers to the Junglefowl, nor is the bird 

 less able to care for itself than at other seasons. For the present we must be content 

 to state the mere fact that these birds expend a considerable extra outlay of vitality in 

 growing a localized patch of feathers, which lasts only a few weeks, and which in 

 character is both atavistic and like the generalized feathers of the upper back. The 

 time of assumption of this generalized neck plumage varies with the locality. From 

 the terai south of Darjeeling I have a bird in full moult, shot on the twentieth of May, 

 but this is unusually early even for the northern range. In the Malay States, August 

 seems the usual period. Sportsmen who shoot birds in this condition usually consider 

 them as abnormal, perhaps hemaphrodite individuals. 



I believe that in birds of strictly wild blood and pedigree, this eclipse moult is 

 regular, but in several cocks which I have shot, and in many more which I have trapped, 

 I have noticed a great irregularity and even asymmetry in this moult, due, I am 

 convinced, to the infusion of the blood of native village birds. 



Juvenile Plumage. — In this phase the neck and rump-hackles are short and 

 broader, with considerable variation, due to the earlier or later moult of the individual 

 bird. The colours of these feathers are brighter and more distinct, the dark centres 

 being larger, and the edges yellow, rather than orange. The flight feathers and their 

 coverts are dark cinnamon, mottled and finely vermiculated with black. 



Adult Female. — The variation in the plumage of the hen is, within narrower 

 limits, correspondingly as great as in the cock, and, of course, attributable to the same 

 causes. 



The crown of the head is rusty red, shading into orange on the neck and pale 

 yellow on the mantle, all the feathers with a wide black stripe down the centre. On 



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