  It is surprising what odd and variegated costumes are sometimes worn by the juvenile members of the bird community. Frequently their attire is so different from that of their elders that even the expert ornithologist may be sorely puzzled to determine the category to which they belong; yet there are usually some characteristic markings, however obscure, by which their places in the avian system may be fixed. As a rule, the plumage of young birds is more striped and mottled than that of mature specimens, Nature playing some odd pranks of color-mixing in tiding a bird over from callow infancy to full-fledged life. Fashion plates in the world of bantlings would be of little account, as no fixed patterns are followed. Some parts of the growing bird’s plumage change to the normal color sooner than others. I remember a young male indigo bird that I saw in October, whose garb, just after fledging, must have been a warm brown almost like that of the adult female; but now he had cast off a part of his infantile robes, and put on in their stead the cerulean of his male parent; his tail, rump, and the base of his wings What a party-colored suit the young bluebird wears! His breast, instead of being plain brick-red as in the case of the adult bird, is profusely striped with dark brown on a background of soiled white; and his upper parts, in lieu of the warm azure of riper years, are a lustrous brown curiously mottled with tear-shaped blocks of white; while his wings and tail have already assumed the normal blue of this species. In the days of his youth the chipping-sparrow also dons a striped vest, so that, if it were not for his smaller size, it would be difficult to distinguish him from his relative, the grass-finch. My admiration was especially stirred, one midsummer day, by the dainty appearance of a small coterie of bush-sparrows flitting about on a railroad which I was pursuing on foot; a large patch on their wings was of a dark, glossy brown tint, extremely pretty, and looking precisely as if it had been painted by the deft hand of an artist. Their under parts were variously streaked with white and dusk. At first I scarcely recognized my familiar little sylvan friends; but their intimacy with several adult specimens, as well as several well-known diagnostic markings, settled the question of their identity beyond a doubt. Not every person is aware that the common redheaded woodpecker is no red-head at all during the first summer of his buoyant young life, but a black-head instead, or, rather, his head and neck are very dark gray. However, one day in September I was delighted and amused to find an adolescent woodpecker whose head and neck were beginning to turn quite reddish, flecked everywhere with white, giving him a decidedly picturesque appearance as he scuddled up an oblique fence-stake. Of course the red-head is always sui generis, but in this case he seemed to be more so than usual. Nearly all the woodpeckers—the downy, the hairy, and the golden-winged—are devoid of the red spots on their heads, while young, to prevent them, I suppose, from becoming vain. Sometimes an entirely foreign tint is introduced into the plumage of the young bird during his transition state. One day I was surprised to observe a decidedly bluish cast on the striped breast of a young towhee bunting, which was all the more curious because there is no blue whatever in the plumage of either the adult male or female. But the most curious freak of Nature’s dyeing I have ever seen in the bird world was in the case of a young scarlet tanager, whose body, including the wings, was completely girded with a band of white, the border of which was quite irregular. As every observer knows, the only colors visible in the adult male’s plumage are black and scarlet; still, when the scarlet feathers are pushed aside, they show When he is first fledged, the pattern of the young cardinal grossbeak’s plumage very much resembles that of his mother; but soon the bright red of his full dress begins to peep here and there through the grayish-olive of his kilts and trousers, so to speak, making him look as if he had been meddling with a keg of red paint and had splashed himself liberally with it. By and by there is a very odd blending of tints in his suit. Scarcely less curious is the garb of the young white-crowned sparrow; his whole head is black or blackish-brown, except a tiny speck of white in the centre of the crown, gleaming like a diamond in its dark setting. In the adult bird the whole crown is a glistening white, bordered on each side by a black band, which circles about on the forehead and separates the crown-piece from the white superciliary line. Some of the warblers are scarcely recognizable in their juvenile attire. For example, the young black-poll, bay-breasted, and chestnut-sided warblers bear little, if any, resemblance to their parents, whose diversified nuptial robes make our woodlands radiant in the spring. The young are quite tame in their soiled olive plumes, and look so much alike that the ornithologist is often at his wits’ end to tell them apart. Were it not for the yellow rumps of the magnolia and myrtle warblers when young, one would scarcely know them from a dozen other species as they pursue their journey southward in Thus it will be seen that the study of ornithology is made more difficult, and at the same time more interesting, by this change of toilet among the birds,—more difficult, because the observer must learn to identify the birds in their youthful as well as in their adult plumage; and more interesting, because of the greater variety thus given to this branch of scientific inquiry. |
|
