BIRDS OF NORTH AND MIDDLE AMERICA. 65 
VANELLUS VANELLUS (Linneus). 
LAPWING. 
Adults in breeding plumage (sexes alike).’—Pileum (including crest), 
anterior portion of loral and malar regions, chin, throat, foreneck, 
and entire chest uniform, faintly glossy, blue-black; sides of head 
and neck white, passing into gray on hindneck; back, scapulars, and 
tertials metallic bronzy green changing to coppery purple on outer 
scapulars; wing-coverts dark purplish blue, changing to greenish, 
becoming decidedly green on greater coverts; remiges dull black, the 
tips of the three outer primaries, for an inch or more, light gray with 
white shafts; rump like back but less strongly metallic; upper tail- 
coverts cinnamon-rufous; tait with basal half and tip white, the middle 
(subterminal) portion dull black, this color decreasing (and the white 
correspondingly increasing) in extent to the outer rectrices, nearly 
(sometimes quite) disappearing on outermost pair; under parts, 
posterior to chest, immaculate white, passing into light cinnamon- 
rufous on under tail-coverts; bill black; iris dark brown; legs and 
feet lake red or fleshy red (in life). 
Winter plumage.—Similar to the summer plumage but with the 
black on anterior portion of loral and malar regions replaced by white; 
a broad superciliary stripe, chin, and entire throat white, and the 
white along sides of hindneck and occiput tinged with buff. 
Young.—Similar to winter adults but color of bindneck, back, 
rump, etc., scarcely metallic olive or brownish olive, all the feathers 
tipped or terminally margined with light rusty’ or tawny-olive, as are 
also the wing-coverts; black of chest much duller, and crest absent 
or but slightly developed. 
Downy young.—Upper parts grayish brown (drab) coarsely mottled 
or marbled with black, interrupted by a broad band of immaculate 
pale brownish buff or buffy white across hindneck; lower portion of 
lores, anterior half (approximately) of malar region, chin and throat 
immaculate dull white or buffy white; suborbital and auricular regions 
pale buffy brown or pale drab with irregular blotches and streaks of 
black along lower edge, connected, more or less, with a blackish band 
across lower foreneck or upper chest; rest of under parts immaculate 
buffy white, strongly tinged posteriorly with brownish buff. 
2 In Bull. Brit. Orn. Club, xiv, 1904, 62, Mr. F. W. Frohawk distinguishes the sexes 
by a difference in the wing-formula; the male having the second primary (from outside) 
equal to the fourth, the third longest, the first equal to the seventh, while the female 
has the second and third equal and longest, the first equal to the fourth. I have not 
been able, however, to verify this supposed difference in the sexes, some specimens 
having neither formula. : 
40017—19—Bull. 50, pt S— -6 
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