the grouse, like the summer ptarmigan and the woodcock, the duck is, as it 

 were, 'dissolved' into its vari-patterned background, by perfect obliterative 

 shading and picture-pattern. 



Two details of the male Wood Duck's costume have yet to be mentioned, 

 his gaudily-painted bill and his marbled under- wing-coverts. The bill is 

 marked with bright yellow, red, white, and black, and in connection with the 

 varied water-scene rendered by the bird's plumage, it must often pass for a 

 reflection-picture of bright-colored things like flowers, on the shore — or per- 

 haps for the actual blossoms of water plants. But it is to be supposed that 

 the flowerlike aspect of the bill renders its owner a still more direct and simple 

 service, by separately disguising that implement of offense from the insects 

 and other small but active creatures which form a part of his diet. A pied, 

 flowerlike bill would probably, in the long run, succeed better in the capture 

 of its agile prey than would a dull and normally tinted one, without deceptive 

 color or markings. Of this the reader is to hear more in a later chapter. 



The use of the black-and-white marbling of the under-wing-coverts and 

 axillars, shared by both sexes, is not surely apparent. But it seems likely that 

 both the color and the markings of these feathers serve chiefly or wholly for 

 'obliteration,' coming into play when the birds are sitting and walking about 

 in trees (a habit highly characteristic of the species), with wings frequently 

 half spread. The ground color of white then becomes effective in neutralizing 

 the shadow, as in the case of the belly, and the dusky specks and bars constitute 

 a generalized obliterative pattern tending to 'merge' the wing, visually, into 

 its freckled forest background. This pattern is in fact closely akin to that 

 of many out-and-out forest birds. 



The female Wood Duck is colored much more dimly than her mate. Her 

 wings alone are almost exactly the same, and fully as bright; otherwise, her 

 predominant color, aside from the white of her belly, is ashen olive, lustrous 

 with green and purple on the back, scapulars, and crown, verging toward 

 brown on the sides and toward ash-gray on the cheeks, and reaching lustrous 

 olive-green on the upper sides of the tail feathers. Her flanks show no traces 



70 



