Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 6 (1902).djvu/404

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It will be observed that I lack stages two and three in this bird. But my first specimen gives me first and some of the second characters, while the present, which is a very interesting bird, gives me the fourth and some of the fifth. Compare this bird with the fourth stage of A. gambeli, and the general tone of colouring will be found to be quite distinct. Instead of the under parts becoming almost white, as they do eventually in the larger bird, in this they are a stone drab down to the abdomen, which is certainly a very important distinction. On the under parts there is a moulted black feather here and there, drab ones with the black colouring being thrown into them, and a few with the darker drab of the first plumage not all extracted. There is no trace of this bird ever having been a "speckle-belly." On the head and neck there is more of a slaty tinge. The mantle and outer wing-coverts are much darker. There is a broad space of white at the base of the bill, which also extends low down under the throat; but there may be a tendency to albinism in this bird, as there are a few white feathers scattered on the neck; nevertheless, it is as well to point out that the white extends under the throat in the first plumaged bird, but is not traceable in any of the immature specimens of A. gambeli.

Female.—Length 26 in.; weight 4½ lb.; wing 15 in.; bill 1·80 in.; tarsus 2·52 in.; neck 7½ in.

In the fifth stage of this bird, which I miss in my series, but am well acquainted with, the whole of the under parts have become a dull white, with a black feather showing here and there.

In the sixth stage the drab colouring matter—now pale—has been thrown into the previously white feathers of the under parts; large patches and broken bands of black are appearing as the result of moult combined with the deposition of the black pigment. It appears to me that up to this sixth stage the bird