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The Colors and Plumage of Birds
Moulting of scarlet tanager. The bright colors of plumage found on some birds have been one means of attracting attention to the study of bird life. Quite as interesting as the bright colors themselves are the changes in color through which a bird may pass during a year. The case of the scarlet tanager may be taken as an illustration. When the young bird first leaves the nest, its general color is yellow ish green above and streaked below. During the fall these feathers are moulted and a new set appears, the bird being olive green above and greenish yellow below, with brown wings and tail.
The bird passes the winter in this plumage, that of the male and female being similar. In the spring the bird again moults and the mate acquires the bright-red body feathers, while the female retains its olive-green color. These are the breeding-plumages which the birds retain during the summer. In the fall the birds moult again and the male again acquires the greenish plumage of the previous winter except that its wings and tail are now black instead of brown.
Moulting. All birds moult in the fall, and when the male in his summer plumage is more brightly colored than the female, he takes on during the winter a duller color similar to that of the female. Some birds moult agiiin in the spring, as in the case of the brightly colored birds just mentioned, when the male again acquires his bright breeding-plumage. Sometimes this moult is complete, sometimes only partial.
Change due to wear. A bird’s color may also change by wear and fading. The tip of a feather may be of a different color from the rest of the feather, and when this tip wears off, another color will be exposed. When the male bobolink first moults in the sprrng, it is of a yellowish color, due to yellow tips on the feathers. In a few weeks these yellow tips wear off exposing the black and giving the bird its characteristic summer plumage. Other ilhistrations are found in the snow bunting and red-winged blackbird.
Changes in color. The color of an individual bird may change in accordance with two factors, age and season. The plumage of the nestling is often different in color from that which it later acquires. When the male and female are differently colored, the young usually resemble the female, as with the goldfinch and scarlet tanager. In the case of the bluebird, however, the young birds have spotted breasts and resemble neither of the adults entirely, although even here the general color is similar to that of the female. When the male and female are alike, the young usually resemble them, as in the case of the chickadee. But in the case of the red-headed woodpecker, the young lack the brightly colored feathers that both adults possess on the head.
The color of a bird may also change according to season. In the case of those birds in which the male and female are differently colored, the male has two distinct plumages, that of the summer, which is usually conspicuously colored, and that of the winter, which is usually dull-colored. And during the two moulting periods when the bird is changing from one plumage to another, it may show a partial combination of both plumages.
Differences in sex. Some species of birds show a difference in color between the male and the female. Sometimes thig difference may be slight, as in the yellow warbler, Baltimore oriole, and bluebird, involving only different shades of the same color; or it may be extremely conspicuous, involving an entire change of color, as with the red-winged blackbird and its sparrow-like mate, the scarlet tanager and its greenish mate, the rose-breasted grosbeak and its brownish mate. Other examples are the indigo bunting, goldfinch, and bobolink.
Protective coloration. Naturalists are not agreed as to the significance of the extremely bright colors found on some birds, but it seems to be a very general law that the coloring of many birds is such as to render them inconspicuous and thus furnish protection from their enemies; hence the term, “protective coloration.” Many birds that live on the ground, such as the miled grouse and woodcock, are so similar in appearance to their surroundings that the birds are rendered almost invisible.
Many birds are protected by the law of counter-shading. The back which is exposed to the light, is darker than the breast, which is in the shadow, and the sides gradually shade from dark above to light below. The effect of this gradation in coloring is to make the bird so harmonize with its surroundings that it is rendered much less conspicuous than it would otherwise be. It is very common to find birds with the under parts lighter colored than the upper parts; such as the house wren, phoebe, red-eyed vireo, cuckoo, and many others. This law has been worked out and proved by means of interesting experiments by Abbott H. Thayer.
Yahoo! News Search Results for birds
Yahoo! News Search Results for birds
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