Can someone please give me a brief history of the usage of the terms
"basic" and "alternate" to describe plummages? It seemed quite proper not
too long ago to use "breeding" and "non-breeding" (National Geographic uses
"winter") to describe a bird's plummage. I'm not even sure if "basic" is
the breeding or the non-breeding plummage. It seems to me that we are
taking a step backward here.

Denny Granstrand
Yakima, WA