File:A history of birds (1910) (14563292077).jpg

Identifier: historyofbirds00pycr (find matches)
Title: A history of birds
Year: 1910 (1910s)
Authors: Pycraft, W. P. (William Plane), 1868-1942
Subjects: Birds
Publisher: London, Methuen and Co
Contributing Library: American Museum of Natural History Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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e not easily accountedfor. Are these independently acquired markings, or inheritedancestral larval markings? They certainly can have nothingto do with the adult coloration. With the birds the problem becomes still more complex,inasmuch as, in the precocious types at least, we may have threeseparate plumages: (a) the nestling; (/;) of the fully-fledgedimmature stage, which may be the same as that of thefemale ; and (c) the adult stage, i.e., the plumage worn by themale only, or by both sexes. With regard to the immature stage it is worthy of com-ment that, as Professor Newton has pointed out, Throughoutthe Class Aves it is observable that the young, when first fledged,generally assume a spotted plumage of a peculiar character—nearly each of the body feathers having a light-coloured spotat its tip—and this is particularly to be marked in many groupsof the oscines. . . . There seems to be strong presumptive evidence to showthat the primitive coloration of young birds took the form of
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^ o ^ NESTLING BIRDS AND WHAT THEY TEACH 255 longitudinal stripes. Nowhere are these stripes seen to betterperfection than in the young of the Emu. Here, in the veryyoung bird, we find a long, thin, white stripe extending fromthe head down the back of the neck, and tail wards along theback on either side of the middle line. Below the trunk-stripea second occurs, but towards the end of the nestling period it isinteresting to notice these stripes appear to increase in number.The second, inferior trunk-stripe of the newly hatched birdextends forward to join the neck-stripe just described; andbeneath the second, now elongated stripe, a third appears, andthis runs upwards to form a second neck-stripe, running parallelwith the first; below this third a fourth stripe appears ; thisextends from the end of the tibia, upwards and forwards alongthe flanks, terminating at the base of the neck. The continuousneck-stripe. No. i, breaks up at the base of the skull into anumber of dots in the older b

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