The Nomenclature of Plumages and Molts

Abstract

IN The Auk of 1959 (76: 1-31) there appeared an article by P.S. Humphrey and K. C. Parkes entitled "An approach to the study of molts and plumages," which will be the subject of this paper. Some readers may not be familiar with Humphrey and Parkes's paper and therefore would welcome a summary of the principal points discussed by these authors. Feeling unhappy with the terminology of molts and plumages as proposed (in 1900) by Dwight, and which has been, to use their words, the foundation of most, if not all, subsequent work, they decided to replace it with an almost completely new nomenclature. In their opinion (p. 14) "there is clearly a need for a semantically 'clean,' independent, uniform, and practical terminology applicable to plumages and molts of all birds," and therefore they endeavored to introduce a nomenclature which might assist in clarifying homologies of molts and plumages. With that aim in mind, they do not spare a single one of the expressions which are in current use, except the term juvenal plumage. They do away with adult, subadult, immature, annual (or perennial) plumage, nuptial plumage, off-season or non-breeding plumage, and so with Dwight's whole system of molt nomenclature, because they believe that molts should be named in terms of the incoming, and not of the replaced, generation of feathers. They introduce the new term basic plumage to designate what we used to call annual or, following Lynes (1930: 38), perennial, plumage. The molts by which this basic plumage, as well as the juvenal plumage, are replaced should henceforth both be called prebasic molts, no longer the annual and the postjuvenal molt, respectively. In birds which have as adults two plumages per cycle, as, for instance, the Scarlet Tanager (Piranga olivacea), the complete molt is, in their