Greetings,

In response to my confession about having difficulty remembering that in the
Humphrey-Parkes plumage terminology Definitive Basic plumage is what birds
appear in after the breeding season Michael Price wrote:

>>>>I wonder if the underlying and incorrect assumption is that many
non-passerine species have molt-calendars no different to those of most
passerines, because that's what. In my own mind, I have to consciously avoid
using warblers, for example, as a molting Greenwich Mean Time, because those
songbirds were the first things I learned when I started birding, and even
now I unconsciously relate to that standard sometimes.

Another potential source of confusion is relating molt-calendars to the
human one. The birds may not be finished their sequence in a neat 365 days.

<snip>

Maybe it would help to separate them in your mind to note that
territorial/breeding-display/breeding is the duty and Alternate plumage is
the uniform --since all of the individuals wearing the Def Alt plumages in a
species/subspecies look the same, one could equally easily call it a uniform
as a plumage-- it wears doing so. Come to that, that leads to a
perhaps-useful analogy: it might help to think of the Def Alt male (or
female in those species where they assume territorial acquisition and
display duties) as being in uniform because they're on breeding duty, and
out-of-uniform, its Basic plumage, the rest of the time when it's off-duty
(in migration, wintering). The juvs look different because kids usually want
to look different from their parents, anyway. '-) >>>>

You know, Michael, tweeters, it really is even much worse than "[an]
underlying and incorrect assumption [ ] that many non-passerine species
have molt-calendars no different to those of most passerines."

I'm surprised nobody called me on this sooner; if only I could stop thinking
of a species in terms of the male's appearance, I would not have this
difficulty remembering that Basic is not the male's "flashy" attire.
Incredibly sexist of me to equate the male Definitive Alternate plumage with
the species as a whole (forgetting for the moment the identification
convenience).

I try to make it a point in everyday life to avoid such pitfalls, but darn
if this one didn't sneak in there and has gone unnoticed for many, many
years. Thank you Michael for your posting, which finally kicked my brain in
the right track.

I think this will do the trick : thinking of the female plumage (or male in
those species where the female assumes territorial acquisition and display
duties) as the norm = Basic (of course this only applies to species with
different male and female plumages). Having come to grips with that the
juveniles are pretty conformist ;)

Martin Muller, Seattle
MartinMuller at email.msn.com