"Once a pied bird always a pied bird" is the expression of a common
fallacy. A pheasant may be almost white for months, then change
colour, and become hardly different from other birds. A pied bird
tends to become more pied as the time of moulting approaches. A homely
illustration of this increasing lightness of colour is seen when a
black cat is about to change its coat; then the fur turns a rusty
brown. When this is shed the new growth seems blacker than ever. A
black cat or dog with white marks nearly always has young with similar
markings. And if you have a white or pied hen pheasant, in spite of the
fact that after a moult her new feathers may come of the ordinary brown
shade, you may expect, perhaps, half the chicks from her eggs to wear
their mother's pretty white or pied dress. Birds that have been pied
in their youth, then have put on sober apparel, again put on the showy
shade of feathers in their old age, though it is a lucky pheasant that
reaches anything like old age, whether pied or not.
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