Page:Bird Life Throughout the Year (Salter, 1913).djvu/171

Rh The first or nestling plumage of young birds is of special interest, as in many cases it very soon undergoes modification. It is evident that fledglings in general resemble the female bird, but in young males, as of the chaffinch and bullfinch, the distinguishing features of the plumage of the cock bird soon become apparent. The nestling dress is perhaps a reminiscence of ancestral plumage before specific distinctions had become so marked as at present, e.g., the spotted breasts of young blackbirds indicate a near relationship to the thrush, and if the spotted dress of young robins leads us to include the redbreast in the same family, we shall not be far astray.

But it is not only the small perching birds which the long June days find busy with nursery duties. Upon her platform of sticks the Sparrow-hawk is dividing a neatly-plucked blackbird amongst her young, whose dress of spotless down lends them an air of innocence but little in keeping with their true character. The young Kestrels in the hole in the old quarry, when inspected, shrink as far back as they can, then stand and face us with defiant eyes and wide-open menacing beaks, their claws clutching nervously.

About the middle of the month the Partridge leads her young, dainty as bantam chicks, to the old weedy pasture, unmown for years, there to scratch amongst the anthills to lay bare the succulent "eggs" of which