TEMMINCK'S TRAGOPAN 97 



are far ahead of the body plumage. When this full immature garb is attained, 

 we find the head and neck to be clad in dull brown feathers, those of the crown 

 with few or no markings, while the chin and throat are streaked with white. By 

 far the more usual plumage of the first year male is a black crown, more or less 

 tinged with brown and dull red. Around the neck, as in melanocephalus, we find 

 a bright collar, dull orange-crimson at the back, and usually orange-yellow across 

 the throat. From here posteriorly the typical first year plumage is a cold grey, 

 mottled and irregularly banded with black above, while below, from the breast 

 backward, a central lighter area appears, increasing in size until on the belly it 

 dominates the faint buff and grey mottling. Only on the tertiaries and inner 

 secondaries do we find well defined the black lateral ocelli, which are so characteristic 

 of this plumage in some other Tragopans. They are scarcely traceable on the 

 scapulars and back. The secondaries are dark brown, coarsely barred with 

 sandy buff, while the barring and mottling on the primaries is much more 

 rufous. 



The tail, too, is exceedingly variable, the coarse mottlings being more rufous if an 

 earlier moult has taken place, or greyer and darker if the plumage as a whole is more 

 adult. Whatever curious pattern and haphazard half-and-half plumage is acquired at 

 this moult, is retained in all its particoloured bizarreness until the succeeding annual 

 shedding of the feathers. There is no "gradual assumption" of adult colour in any 

 sense other than the accidental individual bodily condition at the time of renewing 

 the plumage. 



In individuals which acquire somewhat more than usual of the adult colouring 

 at this first autumn moult, the transitional condition of the breast spots is most 

 interesting. The pearl grey appears as a pigment, and one finds the remains of the 

 white immature spots in all degrees of obliteration, sometimes only as a trace on 

 a few barbs. Likewise the rufous edging appears here and there as a faint reddish 

 tinge. First year males have the bill from the nostril about 15 ; wings, 223 ; tail, 

 178; tarsus, 76; middle toe and claw, 66 mm. 



At the time of this moult we find the spurs little more than flat nodules. In 

 the majority of individuals there is little or no thinning of the throat feathers 

 during the first year, the streaked dark and white feathering being as dense as 

 in the hens. 



Second Autumn Moult, Male. — Just as we have seen that, during the first 

 year, young males are almost invariably clad in a particoloured garb, with their heads 

 and necks precociously hued and patterned, like a boy in knickerbockers wearing a 

 high hat, so at the succeeding moult, if we are fortunate enough to get a bird 

 at exactly the right period, we find the opposite condition existing. Here, again, 

 the moult of the entire body precedes that of the head and neck by an appreciable 

 time, and I have seen a September bird, apparently fully adult as regards body 

 plumage, with the head and neck of a most unkempt mingling of youthful and 

 pseudo-adult plumage. The rapid and irregular shedding of the feathers of the 

 throat adds to the disreputable appearance ; a bird clad in deep crimson, dotted 

 with pearls, with a head and neck which look as if the owner had passed through 

 some terrible calamity, caught, perhaps, in a snare, and escaping only after much 



