tour-feathers and elaborate picture-patterns, at a remarkably early age — 

 while they are still mere chicks — but with this and a few smaller exceptions, 

 there is much sameness in the baby plumages of the many members of these 

 widely separated orders. (See Figs. 67 and 72-76.) Pure obliterative shad- 

 ing is universal among them, occurring fully developed even in species whose 

 adult plumages lack it. Their color varies correspondingly to that of their 

 normal surroundings; those which are raised on the rocks, like terns and 

 nighthawks, being grayer, as forest-hatched grouse and whip-poor-wills are 

 browner; but there is a prevailing tone of dim-brown ground-color by which 

 the variations are connected. The patterns of these youngsters, too, are 

 nearly all much alike. Grebe chicks, young woodcocks, and some young 

 ducks, with their fantastic obliterative spots and stripings (see Figs. 77-82), 

 are exceptions; but most of the other kinds, from gulls to goatsuckers, wear 

 on their baby-down a soft, blotchy speckling, which seems to be the nearest 

 approach to a near-ground picture that the weak, hairy feathers can produce. 

 But this pattern serves admirably to merge the little, counter-shaded puflf 

 of a chick into its immediate background of rock or pebbles or leaf-strewn 

 forest earth. The 'obliteration' indeed, strongly abetted by the chick's 

 form-belying, ambiguous fluffiness, is often perfect. (See Figs. 48, 72, 74, and 

 82.) Young ducks and geese, living much among green reeds and grasses, 

 are more or less strongly tinted with greenish yellow, but their markings are 

 usually very simple. Baby plovers and sandpipers (Figs. 72 and 76) have a 

 dainty and effective pattern, though still more or less of the blotchily speckled 

 type, and are counter-shaded to a nicety; as are, indeed, almost all terrestrial 

 downy chicks. 



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