LIFE HISTORIES OF NORTH AMERICAN DIVING BIRDS. 13 
while riding on her back. Then soon learn to dive and to feed them- 
selves on small fish, insects, aquatic worms, and vegetable matter. 
Plumages.—The downy young show considerable variation in 
color patterns, but in a general way they may be described as prac- 
tically black above when first hatched, fading to blackish brown or 
seal brown as the chick increases in size; this color includes the sides 
and crissum, leaving only the belly pure white; the head and neck 
are broadly and clearly striped, longitudinally, with black and 
white; the chin and throat are often spotted with black but are some- 
times clear white. There is usually a distinct white V on the top of 
the head, starting on the forehead, above a superciliary black stripe 
which usually includes the eyes, and terminating in broad white 
stripes in the sides of the neck; there is also a median white stripe 
or spot on the crown and the back is, more or less distinctly, marked 
with four long stripes of dull white or grayish. The lighter 
stripes, especially on the head and neck are often tinged with buffy 
pink. This downy covering is worn until the young bird is more 
than two-thirds grown, the colors becoming duller above and grayer 
below. The first real plumage is acquired early in September, dark 
above and white below, as in the adult, but signs of youth are re- 
tained in the head and neck, both of which are more or less striped 
with black and white on the sides; the neck is also more or less 
rufous. I have a specimen in this plumage taken November 15, but 
I have other specimens taken in November and December, appar- 
ently young birds, which have lost all traces of the stripes and the 
rufous neck. The stripes always disappear during the fall or early 
winter, but the reddish neck is often retained until the young bird 
acquires its first nuptial plumage. This closely resembles the adult 
nuptial plumage but the colors are duller and not so pure; the chin 
and throat are whiter, the red of the neck is mottled with dusky, the 
crown is browner, fading gradually into the mottled cheeks; the 
sharply defined color pattern of the head, so conspicuous in the 
adult, is very much obscured in the young birds. At the first post- 
nuptial moult, when the bird is a little more than a year old, I 
think that old and young birds become indistinguishable, although 
I am not sure that another year is not required to accomplish this. 
The postnuptial or summer moult is complete and is prolonged 
through August and September. The adult fall plumage is charac- 
terized mainly by the absence of red which entirely disappears from 
the neck and breast and is replaced by a white breast and a dusky 
neck; the pale gray of the chin, throat, and cheeks is sharply defined 
against the dusky neck, as it is against the red neck in the spring; 
young birds have no such sharp line of demarcation; the crown is also 
darker than in young birds. I have seen one specimen, No. 15994 
