9; 



D 



out into a triangular spot ; lower part of the back and rump brown, shaded with rufous, which is much 

 clearer on the upper tail-coverts ; quills brown, the innermost secondaries faintly glossed with fulvous 

 brown, and the primaries obscurely margined with the same colour; tail entirely black, the feathers 

 pointed at the tips ; under surface of the body pale orange-rufous, this colour extending on to the 

 forehead and sides of the face ; the ear-coverts narrowly streaked with whitish lines along the shaft ; 

 cheeks mottled with little specks of brown, collecting on the lower part, and thus forming an indistinct 

 malar stripe ; the throat itself scarcely spotted at all, but the breast covered with more or less distinct 

 small bars of brown, which occupy the tip of each feather ; the flanks deepening into rust-colour ; the 

 under tail-coverts dusky brown, washed with rufous and lined down the centre with shaft-stripes of 

 buff; bill horn-brown, paler on the lower mandible; feet horn-brown. Total length 9 - 8 inches, 

 culmen 07, wing 4'9, tail 4 - l, tarsus 135. 



Obs. Besides the specimen above described, we have seen another very similarly marked in the collection 

 of Mr. J. H. Gurney, jun. ; it is also a young bird, but is slightly more brownish red in colour than 

 the one we have been describing. Another example in our own collection is in very interesting 

 plumage, and is moulting from the rufous dress into the full black of the adult ; it has a curious grey 

 band across the tail, which is probably accidental. This bird is certainly a male, and the tinge of the 

 rufous plumage is precisely the same as that described by us above, so that it becomes a question 

 whether the young males are more rufous than the females : on this subject we can find no given 

 information; and Macgillivray does not mention it. We add the following details which Mr. C. R. 

 Davy, of the Kentish-Town Road, London, an experienced bird-fancier, and one from whom we have 

 received many useful hints, has given us on the subject. After admitting that the young birds do 

 vary very much in respect of their rufous plumage, he gives us his experience of the nestling birds as 

 follows : — In the nest the cock birds are always the darkest, stoutest in the beak ; and these differences 

 are discernible from six days old. The feathers along the carpal joint are black in the young cock, 

 but are brown in the hen; and the quills and tail-feathers are very much lighter in the latter sex, 

 never becoming really black, as in the cock. Another fact which he demonstrated to us by means of 

 a bird now living in his shop, is that the young male Blackbird, although it moults in the autumn after 

 it is hatched, does not shed the quills, or, as he calls them, the flight-feathers, until the second autumnal 

 moult ; consequently these are brown, while all the rest of the plumage is black, and by this an old 

 male can always be told by its jet-black quills from a bird of the previous year, which has them 

 brown. Mr. W. B. Tegetmeier informs us that the bird-fanciers are in the habit of distinguishing 

 the sexes of the young when in their first uniform brown plumage, by pulling out a few feathers 

 from the breast — which are reproduced of a black colour in the young males, and of a brown colour in 

 the females. 



Macgillivray gives the following account of the progress of the young towards maturity : — "After the first 

 moult, which commences in September and is completed by the end of November, the plumage of the 

 males is in some almost uniformly brownish black, while in others the fore neck and especially the 

 breast are more or less lunulated with light brown and grey. In all, the auricular coverts are 

 brownish black, without light-coloured shafts, which is never the case in the young females." 



The young male birds of the year, though in black plumage, may always be told by their blackish bill : thus 

 it is that we see some specimens, apparently fully adult, with the latter black ; and we have been asked 

 by several people whether the yellow of the bill disappeared in the winter season : but there can, we 

 think, be no doubt that when once the bill has become yellow it never changes, only deepening into a 

 fine orange as the bird gets older. On examining these black-billed specimens it will also be observed 

 that the black plumage is more or less shaded with brownish, and even in some yellow-billed birds this 

 shade is apparent, showing that the fine silky black plumage is only assumed by the very old birds. 



4Q2 



