COLOURS AND PATTERNS OF BIRDS iii 



replaced by a uniform of brown before the brilliant livery of the 

 adult is assumed. The American scarlet flamingo when adult is 

 clad in scarlet and pink ; the European white flamingo is white 

 with scarlet on the under surface of its wings. Young flamingoes about 

 two months old, with their beaks still nearly straight, have shed the 

 nestling down, but replaced it by a plumage which is almost uni- 

 formly grey, with the faintest traces of scarlet on the wings. In 

 birds-of-prey, adult males and females are so alike that it is most 

 difficult to distinguish them, although the females are usually 

 larger. The young, after moulting off their down, assume a set of 

 successive liveries in which there is a slow change from dirty white, 

 and mottled and spotted brown, to the brilliant blacks and whites 

 and blue-greys of the adult. So also in owls, where the sexes are 

 alike, the young differ from them, being usually paler, browner and 

 more barred, striped and mottled. In doves and pigeons, where the 

 sexes are alike, the young are usually more mottled, and especially 

 in the brightly coloured fruit pigeons are browner and with little 

 trace of the metallic sheens and brilliancy of the adults. The 

 common cuckoo is almost exactly alike in the two sexes ; the back 

 is uniformly ashy grey with small white spots on the darker tail, and 

 the under parts are white with dusky bars. The young, in immature 

 plumage, which they wear until they are as large as their parents, 

 are clove-brown above, and the feathers of the wing and tail are 

 barred and mottled, so that the general appearance is strikingly 

 different from that of the adult. The young of thrushes and fly- 

 catchers are clad in a completely spotted plumage, but the adults 

 are generally uniformly covered above. 



When the sexes are alike or nearly alike, and especially when they 

 are brilliantly coloured, the young in a few cases may be like the 

 adults. In kingfishers the young are only a little less brilliant than 

 the adults. In orioles, where the adults are usually very brilliant, 

 the young are only a Uttle less briUiant. In parrots almost every 

 condition from duU to brilliant young is found. In those such as 

 the nestors, where the coloration is never very brUhant, and where 

 there is a good deal of mottled brown in the plumage, the young are 

 conspicuously browner and more mottled. In other parrots, the 

 first true feathers may be as bright as those of the adult. In 

 the Eclectus parrots, where both males and females are brilliant, 

 but the males are. green and the females red, this distinction 

 between the sexes is carried backwards, so that a young male, still 

 clad in purplish down, shows the brilliant green wings of the adult. 



