1 9 4 THE PIN-TAIL.
Males.—(All in adult plumage). Length, 22'o to 290 ; expanse,
320 to 3775 ; wing, I0'3 to 1175 ; tail from vent, 4-8 to 9-4 ;
tarsus, i'5 to r8 ; bill from gape, 20 to 245 ; weight, 1 Ih.
10 ozs. to 2 Ins. 12 ozs.
Females.—Length, 20'0 to 225 ; expanse, 320 to 345 ; wing,
93 to 102; tail from vent, 4'2 to 5-5 ; tarsus, 145 to 17 ; bill
from gape, 2'i to 2'35 ; weight, I lb. 2 ozs. to 1 lb. 14 ozs.
In the adult male the bill is plumbeous, light plumbeous or
lavender blue, with the entire lower mandible, a broad band
along the entire culmen, the angle at the base of the
upper mandible, and a strip along the margin of its terminal
half, black.
In the adult female (at any rate during the cold season)
the bill is generally very similarly but duller coloured ; it is
blackish dusky, passing to dusky plumbeous on the sides of the
upper and rami of lower mandible. Sometimes in apparent
adults it is uniform dusky. In young birds the bills are everywhere
a neatly uniform blackish dusky.
The irides are deep brown, sometimes with a reddish tinge.
The legs and feet are greyish plumbeous, sometimes paler,
sometimes darker, often duskier on the joints, and always so on
the central portions of the webs, which, in some males, are
almost black ; the claws blackish dusky. In some apparently
adult males (one a very fine bird, length 2875) I have
noted the feet as brownish black, blackish grey, and uniform
dusky,* but the normal colouration is as above described.
THE PLATE.—The bills and feet are not typically coloured ;
usually there is far more blue grey on both. The fulvous buff
flank patch of the male is not sufficiently brought out, otherwise
the figure of the male is not bad ; but in no species is the under
surface more commonly tinged with rusty {vide ante, p. 162) than
in this, and the lower parts ¡11 the Pin-tail consequently vary
from snow-white to a rich rusty buff. In the female, as figured,
the tone of colouration of the upper surface is much too rufous ;
it should be greyer, and very commonly the whitish margins to
the wing coverts are far more conspicuous in this sex than
would appear from the plate. The female can always be
distinguished from that of all our other species by her sharply
pointed tail. Young females have the entire under surface
thickly spotted with greyish brown, j
• The colour of the legs seems to vary a great deal. I have recorded this in
the case of nearly fifty examples, but I have never seen colouration such as Swinhoe
met with in a male. " Legs very pale yellowish flesh colour, vaiiegated with
shades of purplish brown, darker tint of last on nails and on the web membranes."
•f Captain Butler thus describes a young couple of Fin-tails :—" The male had the
head dusky, minutely spotted, increasing on to the neck. Tail of 16 feathers with
central feathers pointed, but not elongated. There was the pale red bar above the
black gieeu speculum with the white edge ; tertiaries very broad dark grey, with
broad velvet stripe, yellowish edging ; back black, with two white bars ; and central
THE PIN-TAIL. '95
This bird, too, towards the close of the breeding season
assumes a sober garb resembling that of the female ; and, though
I have never obtained a bird in this stage of plumage in India,
such must occur in Kashmir and other parts of the Himalayas,
and it may be well, therefore, to quote Yarrcll's remarks on
this subject. He says :—•
" The males constantly undergo a remarkable summer
change in their plumage which renders them, for a time, more
like their females in appearance than any other species in
which this change is observed. This alteration commences in
July, partly effected by some new feathers, and partly by a
change in the colour of many of the old feathers. At first
one or more brown spots appear in the white surface on the
front of the neck ; these spots increase in number rapidly, till the
whole head, neck, breast, and under surface have become brown ;
the scapulars, wing-coverts, and tcrtials, undergo, by degrees,
the same change from grey to brown. I have seen a single white
spot remaining on the breast as late as the 4th of August;
but generally by that time the males can only be distinguished
from females of the same species by their larger size, and their
beak remaining a pale blue colour. In the female the bill is
dark brown," (not usually so in Indian birds I)
" At the annual autumn moult the males again assume, with
their new feathers, the colours peculiar to their sex, but the
assumption is gradual. White spots first appear among the
brown feathers on the front of the neck ; by the end of the
second week in October the front of the neck and breast is
mottled with brown and white ; at the end of the third week
in October a few brown spots only remain on the white."
Two, if not three, more species, of this genus, occur in South
America and the Falkland Islands.
! i a ; i ! , l b l a r C k : i . , V ' ' h }": I ! O W - , l r l 1 ? ; wing-coverts hair brown with white edging • the
S S a S t e , " i" th,'i fc"lale'a"d as in the adult male, transversfly banded
c e n t a l t a i l a in 6 ' H i «™* ' o i ' t a ' 5 u s ' ' * • m i d-<o<=, «1. Female, with
" ™ m y " " n g T1^ , b u t m o r o m a r l i e d l v i"» yc"™- Lower plumage
w n f 9}» 0US- L e " g l h ' 2 0 ; t a r s a s - ' * ! m i d - t 0 < - - "it" claw,