HIMALAYAN BLOOD PARTRIDGE 19 



with slender black tips, except on under parts, where the rufous is paler and purer. 

 Seven primaries, eight secondaries and several greater wing-coverts even at this early 

 age are well in evidence, the former having pushed out about 18 mm. beyond their 

 sheaths, the wing measuring 45 mm. The down clinging to the tips of the growing 

 flight feathers is rarely in a single distal cluster, more commonly with the separated 

 down filaments supported on the extremities of several distal barbs. The sprouting 

 wing feathers are of unusual breadth, dark brown, mottled irregularly with buff, and 

 tipped with pale buff. Bill from nostril, 6 ; tarsus 23 mm. 



Juvenile Plumage. — Bird about five weeks old. The dorsal plumage is 

 uniformly of a dull mottled buff and black, each feather with a very conspicuous, 

 terminal, triangular spot of pale buff. The ventral pattern is a wide, buffy-white 

 shaft-stripe bordered irregularly with darker brown, with the margin of the feather 

 pale buff. 



As the head and neck are the last to lose the nestling down, so their first contour 

 covering is correspondingly more advanced in colour and pattern than the mesoptile 

 body feathers and hints strongly of the adult plumage. The facial area is but scantily 

 covered with featherlets, the anterior crown is buffy, while the nape and neck show 

 traces of the blue colour and white shafts of the adult. The latter is the first certain 

 evidence of the male sex. 



The full-grown juvenile tail-feathers are fourteen in number, and measure but 

 84 mm. in length as compared with 170 mm. in the adult. In shape they are slender, 

 rather pointed and falcate, curving slightly outward and noticeably downward. In 

 colour they are rufous-buff barred with dark brown. 



The delayed 7th-ioth primaries do not finish their growth until the body-moult 

 into adult plumage is well on toward completion. 



Half-grown Male of Two Months. — At this age the moult into the first 

 winter or adult plumage is well marked. It starts at the neck and passes backward 

 over the dorsal aspect of the body, changing the appearance of almost the entire upper 

 surface before any of the lower plumage is affected. Much of the dorsal plumage is 

 now of the fully adult or teleoptile type, both in colour and form, with the exception of 

 the crest feathers, which are much shorter than they are destined to be in succeeding 

 moults. Although the crimson colour is undoubtedly an extreme specialization, yet, 

 curiously enough, this hue is always produced during the early growth of the buffy 

 cephalic feathers, giving them crimson tips. The first teleoptile chin and throat 

 plumage of the male is pure buff with but little admixture of crimson. 



The rectrices are juvenile and full grown. The wing, however, at this age is in 

 active moult. The mesoptile flights, which have served the young bird so well, have 

 reached their limit of usefulness. The moult has begun in the centre of the wing and 

 is proceeding both outward and inward. The innermost primary is new and has reached 

 almost full length, No. 2 is an inch shorter, while No. 3 is not half grown. The 

 remaining primaries are juvenile. The new feathers are darker, with little or no buff 

 mottling, but the most conspicuous mark of distinction is the glistening white rhachis, 

 contrasting strongly with the dull brown shafts of the early flights. 



