340 DIFFERENT PLUMAGES OF THE REDSTART 



second autumn ; that the brilliancy of the perfect dress is 

 acquired the second year; but that they breed and sing the 

 first spring after hatching, just like the full-dress males. Nut- 

 tall says that three years are required to perfect the change, 

 probably basing his remark on Wilson's more detailed observa- 

 tions. The last-named author describes the young males of a 

 year old as almost exactly like the females, but differing in 

 some particulars which he specifies, and adds: — "on the third 

 season, they receive their complete colors ; and, as males of 

 the second year, in nearly the dress of the female, are often seen 

 in the woods, having the same notes as the full-plumaged 

 males, . . . "&c. In another place, bespeaks of finding "both 

 parents of the same nest in the same dress nearly ". Baird and 

 Ridgway, on the other hand, while agreeing that the male is 

 not full-dressed "until about the third year", distinguish the 

 sexes from the very first autumn. 



It is doubtless true, that all the individuals of this species do 

 not go through the successive changes at exactly the same 

 periods ; but, aside from individual perturbations of the pro- 

 cess, the following seems to be the usual course of events : — A 

 male hatched in June, say of 1877, leaves the nest in a plum- 

 age unknown to us. With the first fall moult of 1877, he appears 

 in the garb of the female. At the first spring change, of 1878, 

 he acquires an intensity of coloration that distinguishes him 

 from the female, but has as yet no black or vermilion ; he breeds 

 in this dress at a year old. In the second autumn, of 1878, 

 black appears with the fall change, the tail becoming black. 

 In the spring of 1879, being then not quite two years old, he 

 comes to us in a patchy garb, pure black feathers being inter- 

 spersed among the brown, olive, or slaty of the general plum- 

 age, and the former yellow being heightened to orange. He 

 breeds again in this dress ; the autumnal plumage of the same 

 year, 1879, is not materially different ; and the spring of 1880, 

 his second spring, when he is nearly three years old, gives him 

 the full black, white, and orange attire. Such, at any rate, is 

 the inference from the facts, that each vernal migration em- 

 braces three sets of males : those substantially like the female, 

 without any black or orange ; those like the female, but irreg- 

 ularly patched with pure black, and with heightened yellow ; 

 and those in perfect dress. It does not appear, therefore, that 

 the male gets any pure black until he is a little over a year old, 

 nor that, like the Bobolink, he has a transitory wedding dress. 



