A Female Piranga rubra Assuming the Plumage of the Male. On the 
27th of Maj of the present year my son Percy W. Shufeldt collected at 
Takoma Park, in Montgomery County, Maryland, a female Summer 
Tanager having a plumage so unusual that a record of it would seem 
worthy of presentation. The species is by no means uncommon in the 
locality where it was taken, and the specimen is apparently an adult, of sev- 
eral years of age. In coloration her plumage about corresponds with that 
of a young male of this species during the first summer, or an adult female 
with the following differences the plumage of the upper parts is thickly 
interspersed with the dark red feathers which characterize the male, 
and the plumage of the entire under parts is thickly beset with bright ver- 
million-tinted feathers. Many of the secondaries of the wings are also 
bright red, as is also the outer tail-feather of the left side. I personally 
examined the sex of this specimen on dissection, and found her ovary to 
contain ova varying in size from a No. 10 shot to that of a small pea. 
The skin of this bird is at present in my son’s collection. Dr. R. W 
Shufeldt , Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D. C. 
Auk, 8, July ,1891. P- 3/s ~ 3/4- 
Auk, XIV, Oct., 1897, P jp.^e-7- 
Notes on the Moult and certain Plumage Phases of Piranga rubra. — 
In ‘The Auk’ for July, 1891 (pp. 315, 316) I described an instance wherein 
the Summer Tanager (P. rubra), a female, had assumed the plumage of 
the male. That specimen was collected by my son, Percy Shufeldt, and 
has since been added to the collections of the U. S. National Museum. 
Since that date the same collector has added to his private series, thirteen 
more specimens of this species, and as some of these exhibit certain nota- 
ble conditions of the moult and plumage, it is my intention here to pass 
a few remarks upon the more interesting of these. Twelve of the skins 
are from male birds, while the thirteenth is from an adult female, taken in 
August, 1895, and exhibits the autumnal plumage nearly completed. All 
these individuals were collected either in the northeastern part of the 
District of Columbia, or in the adjacent parts of southern Maryland. Of 
the seven red males in the series taken at random from April 18, 1896, to 
July 15, only one of them shows the full and completed plumage, and 
that the one shot on the first-mentioned date. All of the others present 
more or less green in the wings and tail, and one with a greenish patch 
on the throat. A specimen, an old male, shot on the 15th of July, 1896, has 
both the plumage of the entire body and tail red, while the secondaries 
and primaries of the wings are -in the process of the moult, — the new 
feathers likewise coming in red , — the same applying to the wing-coverts. 
This tends to prove, in so far at least as this particular specimen is con- 
cerned, that in the male of this species in the autumnal moult they 
reassume the red plumage. Another specimen, which I take to be a young 
male of the first spring, and shot on May 14, 1897, has the body plumage 
red, with red and green wings, but the tail exactly half red and half green, 
— the green feathers or the left half of the tail being half a centimeter 
shorter than the red ones. All these feathers are new, with the exception 
of one of the green ones, and it is found next to the outermost one of 
that side. Now the first plumage taken on by both sexes of this species 
after leaving the nest is the olive-green plumage corresponding to that of 
the normal adult females, and in that plumage the birds of the year 
migrate south in the autumn. So that the aforesaid specimen shot on 
May 14, possibly met with an accident, losing all the feathers of the left 
side of the tail with the exception of the one mentioned, and these being 
replaced came in green. This seems to be the only explanation to account 
for the state of affairs seen in this individual. 
In another specimen of this series, a young male of the first autumn 
in the full green plumage, shows a broadish transverse red bar across the 
green and perfected feathers of the tail. 
Perhaps the most interesting specimen in the collection is that of a 
female (adult) which in the spring had, in part, the red plumage of the 
male, and when collected on the 2d of August, 1897, was in full moult, — 
the red feathers of the entire plumage being replaced by the green ones 
of the adult female bird with normal coloration. This particular example 
then, would tend to show that when the females of this species assume 
in the spring the red plumage of the males, that in the autumnal moult 
they pass back again to the plumage of the normally-colored females, — 
whereas the old males reassume the red plumage. — R. W. Shufeldt, 
Smithsonian Institution, Washington , D. C. 
