THE EUFE. 
233 
apparently in equally good health ; it is only less variable in this respect than 
in the colour of the plumage and legs. When visiting the .Zoological Gardens, 
Regent’s Parle, London, in the spring of 1833 or 1834, I was informed by James 
Hunt, one of the keepers, that a bird which had been there for two or three years, 
had a different coloured ruff each summer. This is probably the same bird alluded 
to by Mr. YarreU.* Mr. R. Ball has observed the same fact in the Zoological 
Gardens, Dublin, with respect to a ruff which was received there in full plumage, 
and has twice changed since ; the colour being very different each time. Montagu 
states, on the contrary, that those which came under his observation had, annually, 
the same coloured ruff : it would thus seem that even in this adornment of the nuptial 
season individuals are not constant. 
The twm birds noticed as shot at Belfast Bay, in September 1844, I saw and ob- 
tained some time afterwards. Their sex had not been noted by the preserver. They 
are both of full adult size, though yomig birds of the year, — if “ the fore part of the 
neck and breast of a dull reddish ash” be characteristic of that age. Temminck 
gives, as a diagnostic character, what is also copied as such in ‘ Jenyns’s Manual,’ — ■ 
“ the two middle [tail] feathers barred ; the three outer ones at each side always of 
one colour.” In one of these specimens aU the tail-feathers are barred ; hut the 
barring gradually diminishes from the central to the outer feathers ; the outside one has 
one bar ; the next, two bars ; next, thi-ee, &c. In the other specimen, the three outer 
feathers have each one blackish band at the tip, the extreme edge of which is nar- 
rowly margined with reddish-white ; such are the only markings of these feathers, 
as elsewhere they are plain-coloured. An adult male (shot in the middle of Septem- 
ber) that I examined, has, at the end of the two middle tail-feathers, an obscure 
blackish baud. The outside feather at one side of the tail has one blackish band, 
the next two bands, the third three, aU well marked ; but the opposite side of the 
tail in this same individual (wLich is in the collection at the Belfast Museum) does 
not correspond. It seems to me vain to describe any marking as permanently 
characteristic of this species. 
When visiting Holland at the beginning of June 1826, I had 
an opportunity of seeing rnffs in their halcyon abode — the fens 
of that country, where they were abundant, and quite regardless 
of persons walking within a few yards^ distance. A group of 
them, stationed on a grassy bank close to a road crossing a fen 
between Utrecht and Gorcnin, not only evinced no shyness, but 
gazed with the greatest nonchalance on the passers-by : their 
tameness of course arising from their being unmolested. On 
passing through the Pontine marshes, lying between Pome and 
Terracina, about the middle of the following month of August, 
Brit. Birds, vol. ii. p. 582. 
