106 BULLETIN 50, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 



webs (except two innermost tertials) broadly tipped with white and 

 the shaft of each prolonged into an expanded tear -shaped or linear 

 flattened glossy appendage, resembling red sealing wax; primary 

 coverts and primaries blackish slate or slate-black, narrowly edged 

 with slate-gra}^, the first broadly tipped on both webs with white; 

 primaries with terminal portion of outer web, for 5 mm. (more or 

 less), yellow, or yellow and white, the inner web sometimes with a 

 narrow terminal margin of yellow or white; tail slate-gray, becoming 

 darker (slate-black or blackish slate) toward end, broadly tipped with 

 chrome yellow; bill black terminally, bluish gray basally; iris brown; 

 legs and feet black. (5) Imperfect '^ jpluTrmge: Similar to the perfect 

 plumage, as described above, but markings on terminal portion of 

 outer webs of .primaries entirely white, red wax-like appendages to 

 secondaries absent, and terminal band of tail much paler yellow 

 (straw yellow or pale naples yellow) and often much narrower. 



Young female, first plumage? — -Wings and tail as in the perfect 

 (more brightly colored) adult plumage, but red appendages to second- 

 aries smaller; upper parts otherwise much as in adults, but more olive- 

 grayish, the middle of back faintly streaked with paler; pileum 

 entirely olive-gray, the feathers of the forehead white basally; black 

 of frontal antiee and lores duller and less sharply defined than in 

 adults; malar region entirely dull white; chin and throat dull white, 

 the former margined along each side by a dusky streak; chest, breast, 

 sides, and flanks deep olive-gray, indistinctly streaked with whitish; 

 middle of abdomen and anal region dull white; under tail-coverts 

 vinaceous-cinnamon. 



Adult maZe.— Length (skins), 170-190 (176.9); wing, 110-119 (114); 

 tail, 59-70 (63.6); exposed culmen, 10.5-12 (11.6); tarsus, 20-21.5 

 (20.5); middle toe, 16-19 (17)." 



" I am at a loss for a satisfactory name for this plumage or an explanation of its 

 true meaning. It is obviously quite independent of sex; and that it has nothing to 

 do with the age of the specimen, or at least is not evidence of immature age, is 

 almost equally certain. The only very young specimen of the present species that I 

 have seen has the remiges and rectrices colored exactly as in the brightly colored 

 plumage described above, except that the wax-like appendages to the secondaries 

 are smaller. As a rule, young birds of A. cedrorum, in the streaked plumage of the 

 first summer, lack the red append^es to the secondaries, but sometimes they are 

 present, and the tail-band is usually quite as bright yellow as in adults; therefore it 

 would seem that these two styles of plumage occur both among fully adult and very 

 young birds. 



6 No. 165808; coll. U. S. Nat. Mus. (Biological Survey collection), Yukon River, 

 Northwest Territory, July 29, 1899; W. H. Osgood. 



"Nineteen specimens. 



