Chap. XV. 
COLOUR AND NIDIFICATIOX. 
179 
allied species, when sufficiently mature to breed, differ 
considerably in plumage from the adult males ; but 
after the second or third moults they differ only in 
their beaks having a slight greenish tinge. In the 
dwarf bitterns (Ardetta), according to the same au- 
thority, ‘^the male acquires his final livery at the 
first moult, the female not before the third or fourth 
moult ; in the meanwhile she presents an inter- 
mediate garb, which is ultimately exchanged for the 
same livery as that of the male.” So again the 
female Falco j^eregrinus acquires her blue plumage 
more slowly than the male. Mr. Swinhoe states that 
with one of the Drongo shrikes {JDicrurus maerocercus) 
the male whilst almost a nestling, moults his soft 
brown plumage and becomes of a uniform glossy 
greenish-black ; but the female retains for a long time 
the white striae and spots on the axillary feathers ; 
and does not completely assume the uniform black 
colour of the male for the first three years. The same 
excellent observer remarks that in the spring of the 
second year the female spoonbill (Platalea) of China re- 
sembles the male of the first year, and that apparently 
it is not until the third spring that she acquires the 
same adult plumage as that possessed by the male at a 
much earlier age. The female Bomhycilla carolinensis 
differs very little from the male, but the appendages, 
which like beads of red sealing-wax ornament the wing- 
feathers, are not developed in her so early in life as in 
the male. The upper mandible in the male of an Indian 
parrakeet {Falmornis Javanieus) is coral-red from his 
earliest youth, but in the female, as Mr. Blyth has 
observed with caged and wild birds, it is at first black 
and does not become red until the bird is at least a year 
old, at which age the sexes resemble each other in all 
respects. Both sexes of the wild turkey are ultimately 
X 2 
