That this is the species of which M. Lesson has figured the female in his Oiseaux Mouches, pl. 79, there can be no doubt. His figure is a very fair representation; though it is too slender, and the white mark behind the eye I cannot find: this, however, I do not wonder at, if, as is most probable, his figure was taken from a dried specimen. He says, “it is beyond contradiction the smallest of all those yet known, and without doubt is the ‘very little Humming-bird’ of voyagers. Its length is 2 inches and 4 lines.” But that it is the Trochilus minimus of Linnæus, Buffon, Edwards, and Latham, who can imagine, that puts any faith in testimony? Edwards’ figure, which is said to be “of its natural bigness,” measures 1⁴⁄₁₀ inch; that in the Pl. Enl. 276. fig. 1, is about 1³⁄₁₀; and Latham, who says expressly, “I have received this from Jamaica,” gives its total length 1¼ inch, and that of its beak, 3½ lines. It is true the description as to colouring, &c., bears a very close resemblance to mine, but no one accustomed to the precision of science could mistake 2½ inches for 1¼![26] Neither is it possible that these minute specimens can be the young of the present species; for nestling Humming-birds, even when not half-fledged, are very little less in size than the adult, and, when able to leave the nest, are scarcely to be distinguished as to dimensions. Moreover, having reared this species I can speak positively. But Mr. Bullock records having obtained in Jamaica a species whose body was but half an inch in length; this specimen is understood to have become the possession of the late George Loddiges, Esq., and I have been assured by an ornithological friend, who has seen it, that it is no larger than the species of the old naturalists. Under these considerations, Lesson’s name being manifestly misapplied, I have ventured to give to the present species, a new appellation, derived from its habit of buzzing over the low herbaceous plants of pastures, which our other species do not. The West Indian vervain (Stachytarpheta) is one of the most common weeds in neglected pastures, shooting up everywhere its slender columns, set round with blue flowers, to the height of a foot. About these our little Humming-bird is abundant during the summer months, probing the azure blossoms a few inches from the ground. It visits the spikes in succession, flitting from one to another, exactly in the manner of the honey-bee, and with the same business-like industry and application. In the winter, the abundance of other flowers and the paucity of vervain-blossoms, induce its attentions to the hedgerows and woods.

I have sometimes watched, with much delight, the evolutions of this little species at the moringa tree already spoken of. When only one is present, he pursues the round of the blossoms soberly enough, sucking as he goes, and now and anon sitting quietly on a twig. But if two are about the tree, one will fly off, and, suspending himself in the air a few yards distant, the other presently shoots off to him, and then, without touching each other, they mount upward with a strong rushing of wings, perhaps for five hundred feet. Then they separate, and each shoots diagonally towards the ground, like a ball from a rifle, and wheeling round, comes up to the blossoms again, and sucks, and sucks, as if it had not moved away at all. Frequently one alone will mount in this manner, or dart on invisible wing diagonally upward, looking exactly like a humble-bee. Indeed, the figure of the smaller Humming-birds on the wing, their rapidity, their arrowy course, and their whole manner of flight, are entirely those of an insect; and one who has watched the flight of a large beetle or bee, will have a very good idea of the form of one of these tropic gems, painted against the sky. I have observed all our three species at one time engaged in sucking the blossoms of the moringa at Content; and have noticed that whereas Polytmus and Mango expand and depress the tail, when hovering before flowers, Humilis, on the contrary, for the most part, erects the tail; but not invariably.

The present is the only Humming-bird that I am acquainted with, that has a real song. Soon after sunrise in the spring months, it is fond of sitting on the topmost twig of some mango or orange tree, where it warbles, in a very weak but very sweet tone, a continuous melody, for ten minutes at a time: it has little variety. The others have only a pertinacious chirping.

The season of nidification seems to be as protracted in this, as in the former species; nor does the structure itself differ, except in being of about half the size. The small bushes of Lantana, so common by roadsides, and always covered with orange and yellow blossom, are favourite situations for the domestic economy of this minim bird. The smooth twigs of the bamboo also are not unfrequently chosen. It is not an uncommon thing in Jamaica, for a road up a mountain to be cut in zig-zag terraces to diminish the steepness; and, to prevent the lower side of such a road from crumbling away, stems of green bamboo are cut and laid in a shallow trench along the edge. Shoots spring from every joint, and presently a close row of living palisades are growing along the margin of the road, whose roots, as they spread, effectually bind together the mountain-side, and make the terrace perpetual; while, as they increase in height and thickness, they throw their gracefully-waving tufts over the way, like gigantic ostrich plumes, affording most refreshing shadow from the heat. Such a bamboo-walk, as it is called, winds up the steep side of Grand Vale mountain in St. Elizabeth’s, and here the nests of the Vervain Humming-bird are frequently met with.

One day in June, being up this road, I found two nests attached to twigs of bamboo, and one just commenced. Two parallel twigs were connected together by spiders’ webs, profusely but irregularly stretched across, and these held a layer of silk-cotton, which just filled up the space (about an inch square) between them. This was the base. The others were complete cups of silk-cotton exceedingly compact and neat, ornamented outside with bits of grey lichen, stuck about. Usually the nest is placed on a joint of a bamboo branch, and the diverging twigs are embraced by the base. The nest is about the size of half a walnut-shell, if divided not lengthwise, but transversely. To see the bird sitting in this tiny structure is amusing. The head and tail are both excluded, the latter erect like a wren’s: and the bright eyes glance in every direction. One of these contained two eggs, the other a single young nearly fledged, which, with the nest, I carried to Content to rear.

It is interesting to observe the cleanliness of animals; the dung of young birds would greatly inconvenience them in the nest, and probably cause disease; it is therefore wisely ordained that there should be some mode of getting rid of it. Swallows carry out the excrement of their young in their beaks; and this they are able to do, as at that early season it is enclosed in a tenacious jelly. I observed with admiration, and with adoration, of the tender mercy of God in directing such minutiæ as these, for the comfort of His creatures, that this little Humming-bird, while I was carrying it, elevating its body above the edge of the nest, in the bottom of which it ordinarily lay, ejected the alvine discharge in a forcible jet, to the distance of several feet.

This little nestling I attempted to rear, and had every prospect of succeeding, for it eagerly received the juice of sugar-cane, which I administered to it in a small quill, many times in the day, sometimes adding small insects, as in a former case. But on the third day I was necessitated to return to Bluefields, and rode fifteen miles with the bird in my hand, enclosed in an open box. I took every care of it; but whether from too long fasting, or from the shaking, or exposure to the sun, I know not, but it was dying when I arrived, and a few minutes put an end to its sufferings and my expectations.

Several times I have enclosed a nest of eggs in a gauzed cage, with the dam, taken in the act of sitting; but in no case did she survive twenty-four hours’ confinement, or take the slightest notice of her nest. When engaged in the attempt to domesticate a colony of Polytmus, an opportunity offered to add this minute species to my aviary. For at that time two large tamarind-trees very near the house were in full blossom, and round them the Vervain Humming-bird was swarming. I never saw so many of this tribe at once; they flocked together, as Sam truly observed, “like bees,” and the air resounded with their humming, as if in the neighbourhood of a hive. We caught several with the net, but could make nothing of them; they were indomitably timid. When turned into the room, they shot away into the loftiest angle of the ceiling, and there hovered motionless, or sometimes slowly turning as if on a pivot, their wings all the time vibrating with such extraordinary velocity as to be visible only as a semicircular film on each side. The fact that the extent of the vibration reached 180°, (or so nearly that it seemed to me such,) shews the immense power of the small muscles by which the wings are put in motion. Neither of our other species approaches either the rapidity or extent of this oscillation; and hence with this bird alone does the sound produced by the vibration of the wings acquire the sharpness of an insect’s hum. The noise produced by the hovering of Polytmus is a whirring exactly like that of a wheel put into rapid revolution by machinery; that of Humilis is a hum, like that of a large bee.

The spirit of curiosity is manifested by this little bird as well as by the larger species. When struck at, it will return in a moment, and peep into the net, or hover just in front of one’s face. The stories told of Humming-birds attacking men, and striking at the eyes with their needle-like bills, originated, I have no doubt, in the exaggeration of fear, misinterpreting this innocent curiosity.

Fam.—CERTHIADÆ.—(The Creepers.)

BLACK AND WHITE CREEPER.[27]

This pretty bird, whose lot has been to oscillate in the systems of naturalists from the Warblers to the Creepers and from the Creepers to the Warblers, appears to have as much ambiguity in its manners as in its structure. One day I noticed it, and watched its proceedings, in one of the spreading Black-withes, that form large tangled masses of long slender branches over a clear space of mud in the morasses, the topmost stratum of which alone is furnished with leaves, but that dense enough, not only with its own foliage, but also with the drapery of convolvulus that is usually hung in profusion over it. The little bird was mounting from the bottom hopping from twig to twig, searching and picking as it went up; when it reached the bushy top, it suddenly descended, apparently by dropping perpendicularly to the bottom, where it picked a little about the mud, then mounted gradually, and dropped as before. After proceeding thus two or three times, I secured it.

At other times it affects the trunks of trees, even large ones, like a true Creeper, hopping diagonally up the perpendicular bole, and when at a good height, dropping down upon the wing, to alight again near the root, and proceed upward in another line. Now and then it stops to pick small insects from the crevices of the bark: and this sort of food I have always found in its stomach.

It is rather common in Jamaica during the winter months: we first saw it on the 26th of September, and last on the 30th of April.

The following interesting note accompanies a very correct drawing of this species by Robinson (Birds: large Folio):—“Motacilla alba et nigra varia.—It was pursued by a Hawk, and took sanctuary in Chateau-morant House. Mr. Holladay, overseer at Chateau in Clarendon, made me a present of the live bird, December 24th, 1760. It was very tame, and so hungry that it picked some feathers out of a dead bird, and ate them. It weighed somewhat less than two drachms.”

Fam.—TURDIDÆ.—(The Thrushes.)

HOPPING DICK.[28]
Twopenny Chick.

The birds on which the peasantry in any country have conferred homely abbreviations of human names, are, I think, only such as have something lively and entertaining in their manners. Examples of familiar birds will at once occur to an English reader, and the subject of the present note is by no means an exception to the rule. He is one of the liveliest of our Jamaican birds: in woody places his clear whistle perpetually strikes the ear of the passenger, as he sits among the close foliage, or darts across the glade. Not unfrequently we are startled by a shrill scream in some lonely place, and out rushes the Hopping Dick, jumping with rapidity across the road, almost close to our horse’s feet. He greatly reminds me of the English Blackbird, in his sable plumage, and bright yellow beak, but especially when hopping along the branches of some pimento tree, or upon the sward beneath, in those beautiful park-like estates called pens. The keen glancing of his eye, his quick turns and odd gesticulations, the elevation of his long tail almost erect, his nods and jerks, have in them an uncommon vivacity, which is not belied by his loud voice, as he repeats a high mellow note four or five times in rapid succession, just preparatory to, or during, his sudden flights from tree to tree. His notes are various: sometimes we hear him in the lone wood, uttering, click, click, click, without variation of tone or intermission, for many minutes together. His song which I have heard only in spring, is rich and mellow, much like the English Blackbird’s: he sits in some thick tree, or wood, particularly at earliest dawn, and pours forth his clear notes in a broken strain, and often in a subdued tone, as if singing only to please himself.

I happened to wound slightly two of these birds on the same day, which I placed in a cage. They were free and easy from the first, very clamorous, lively and even headlong in their sudden movements. I found that they would seize and devour with eagerness cockroaches, hard beetles, worms, and even small lizards. I gave them a bunch of the ripe, but dry and insipid, berries of a species of ficus, which they readily picked off and ate. The fruit of this fig they are fond of in a state of freedom; and such is their impudence that they prevent the Baldpate Pigeons, though so much bigger, from partaking. The Baldpates would willingly eat the little figs also, but the Hopping Dicks scream and fly at them, and peck their backs, so as to keep them fluttering from branch to branch, reluctant to depart, yet unable to eat in comfort.

At the break of day, if we pass along a wooded mountain road, such as that lonely one at Basin-spring, in Westmoreland, particularly when the parching winds called norths have set in, in December and January,—we see the Hopping Dicks bounding singly along the ground in every part; but during the day they resort in numbers to the diminished springs and ponds which yet remain, where, after quenching their thirst, they enjoy the luxury of a bathe.

In the high mountains behind Spanish Town, this bird is called the Twopenny chick; but in the parishes of Westmoreland and St. Elizabeth, I have heard him distinguished only by the homely appellation which I have adopted. He is not confined to any particular locality. Dr. Chamberlaine (Jam. Alm.) has “never seen him in the lowlands.” But around Bluefields he is abundant, especially in the little belt of wood that girds the sandy sea-beach at Belmont, where one may meet with him at all times. In the pastures of Mount Edgecumbe he is no less common. In the highest districts, as Bluefields Peaks, though I have sometimes seen him, he is chiefly represented by his congener, the Glass-eye: in the solitudes of Basin-spring, a lower elevation, both species are numerous.

In some “Contributions to Ornithology,” by Dr. Richard Chamberlaine, published in the Companion to the Jamaica Almanack for 1842, this bird is described. The following observations are there quoted from a letter of Mr. Hill’s to the Doctor:—“I paid a visit the other day to the Highgate mountains, a district in which our native Ouzel, the Hopping Dick, is exceedingly abundant. On asking one morning the name of the bird, whose clear, mellow-toned whistle I was then listening to, a negro told me it was the Hopping Dick, and that they ‘always hear him when the long days begin.’ The long days had not yet begun; but at early dawn, while the distant horizon was seen but faintly gleaming through the dull grey break of daylight, and many of these Merles were gliding from one thicket to another, and dashing across the road with that bounding run from which they derive their sobriquet of Hopping Dick, one bird anticipated the season of song, by repeatedly sounding two or three cadences of that full deep whistle with which he salutes the lengthening year.

“The forests skirting the mountain are his favourite haunt. If he frequents the open slopes and crests of the hills, he glides from tree to tree, just above the surface of the grass. If he rises above the lower branches of the pimento, or into some of the loftier shrubs, it is to visit the Tillandsias, or parasitical wild-pines, to drink from within the heart-leaves at those reservoirs of collected dews which are the only resource of the birds in these high mountains. His dark sooty plumage, his brilliant orange bill, and his habit, when surprised or disturbed, of escaping by running or flying low, and sounding all the while his alarm scream till he gets away into the thicket, completely identify him with the European Blackbird.

“It was in the month of July, in 1834, that I first heard the song of this Ouzel, which I would call Merula Saltator, as this name preserves his distinctive sobriquet of Hopping Dick, and refers to his characteristic length of legs, both at the tarsus and the thighs. The shock of an earthquake had wakened all the living tenants of the plantation at which I was staying, when the voice of this bird, as the alarm lulled into silence, was heard from a small coppice of cedar-trees, clear and mellow. Though it was less varied than the song of the European Blackbird, it was very much like its tones when it is heard over distant fields in a summer’s morning. I had been apprised that I should hear it there, for it had sung in that grove daily at that season for three or four years; and though under the disadvantage of being an anticipated song, it was a very agreeable recognition of the melody of the European bird.

“The next time I heard his music was in the month of May, 1836, in the same mountains. The rains of the season had terminated, or only mid-day showers fell, the mornings and evenings being refreshing and brilliant It was now not a single one of these birds that I heard singing lonely in a sequestered cluster of trees, but a hundred of them far and near, blending their voices together, or vying with each other in rivalry of song. My frequent weekly journeys in these districts, from this period to the end of August, were always cheered by this simultaneous outburst of melody from the Merula saltator.”

I found a nest of this bird one day in the middle of August; it was affixed to the highest perpendicular limb of a rather tall pimento in Mount Edgecumbe, and consisted of a rude cup formed of the slender roots of pimento, and placed on a platform of leaves and small twigs. It contained two young, almost fledged, which flew to the ground before they could be seized,—and one abortive egg. The young displayed the plumage of the adult, even to the white webs on the two coverts; but the eyes were dark greyish-brown, the beak blackish, and the feet, dull, horny yellow. The egg measures 1⁴⁄₁₀ inch: by ⁹⁄₁₀: it is white, thickly splashed with dark and pale reddish-brown. Sometimes, as I have been informed, a decaying stump is selected, or any other convenient hollow, into which the bird carries “plantain trash,” or similar materials, and forms a rude nest, laying three or four eggs. And Mr. Hill gives me a statement of a locality which is intermediate between these; observing, “A friend of mine found the nest of a Hopping Dick. It was built amid the dry leaves that had lodged within the forks of a low branch of a mango-tree. It was a structure of small sticks, loosely woven, in the centre of which the young birds nestled among dried foliage.”

GLASS-EYE.[29]
Shine-eye.—Fish-eye.

This is exclusively a mountain bird; inhabiting the very same localities, and subsisting on the same food as the Solitaire, presently to be described; the pulpy berries of a Scrophularious shrub, which the negroes thence call Glass-eye berry. I have never found any animal substance in the stomach of this species, numbers of which I have examined; one in December contained many of the little scarlet figs, from the tree on which I shot it: in February the green pimento-berries are devoured by them; and later in the spring, it appears, the shining fruit of the Sweetwood (Laurus) is attractive to them. On the 30th of March, my lad shot a male Glass-eye by the road-side at Cave, scarcely a stone’s throw from the sea, and level with it; the stomach contained the berries of this Laurus, which is abundant just there. This is the only instance in which I ever heard of the species, except in a mountain locality.

The common names of this bird are bestowed in allusion to the tint of the iris of the eye: this, as Mr. Hill observes, “is not absolutely white, but so transparently suffused with a hue of olive, that the eye has the look of very common glass.”

The figure, attitudes, and motions of the Glass-eye are those of its fellow, the Hopping Dick; it is, however, much more recluse, and jealous of being seen. The dashing manner of flight across the narrow wood-paths are the same in both birds, but the loud and startling tones of the lowland bird are wanting in this. The Glass-eye has but one note that I have heard; a single low “quank,” frequently repeated as he hops from bush to bush, or plunges into the thicket. Dr. Chamberlaine attributes to him “the same loud sonorous chirp as he stealthily scuds from one dark recess of the forest to another;” but I should think him mistaken, were it not that Robinson, who gives a very correct drawing of the species by the name of Turdus capite ferrugineo, and describes it as common in the Liguanea mountains, affirms that “it whistles like our English Blackbirds.” (MSS.)

The Woodthrush of Wilson, (Turdus mustelinus, Gm.,) a delightful songster, is a regular annual visitor in the neighbourhood of Spanish Town, but I have not seen it.

MOCKING BIRD.[30]
“Nightingale.”

One of the very commonest of birds in Jamaica, bold and forward in his manners, inviting rather than avoiding notice, of striking though not showy colours, the Mocking-bird would be sure to attract the attention of a stranger, even were he destitute of those unrivalled powers of song that have commanded the praise of all auditors. The faculty of imitating the voices of other birds, which has given to this species its ordinary appellation, has been ably described by Wilson and others, as well as the variety of notes, apparently original, which it commands. The former has often caused me no small disappointment; hearing the voice of, as I supposed, some new bird, or some that I was in want of, I have found, after creeping cautiously and perhaps with some difficulty to the spot, that it proceeded from the familiar personage before us. With respect to the latter, I have been assured by an observant friend, George Marcy, Esq., of the Kepp, that he, on one occasion, counted no less than eighteen different notes, proceeding from a Mocking-bird perched on a tree in his garden.

It is in the stillness of the night, when, like his European namesake, he delights

that the song of this bird is heard to advantage. Sometimes, when, desirous of watching the first flight of Urania Sloaneus, I have ascended the mountains before break of day, I have been charmed with the rich gushes and bursts of melody proceeding from this most sweet songster, as he stood on tiptoe on the topmost twig of some sour-sop or orange tree, in the rays of the bright moonlight. Now he is answered by another, and now another joins the chorus, from the trees around, till the woods and savannas are ringing with the delightful sounds of exquisite and innocent joy. Nor is the season of song confined, as in many birds, to that period when courtship and incubation call forth the affections and sympathies of the sexes towards each other. The Mocking-bird is vocal at all seasons; and it is probably owing to his permanency of song, as well as to his incomparable variety, that the savannas and lowland groves of Jamaica are almost always alive with melody, though our singing birds are so few.

“It is remarkable,” observes Mr. Hill, “that in those serenades and midnight solos, which have obtained for the Mocking-bird the name of the Nightingale, and which he commences with a rapid stammering prelude, as if he had awaked, frightened out of sleep, he never sings his songs of mimicry; his music at this time is his own. It is full of variety, with a fine compass, but less mingled and more equable than by day, as if the minstrel felt that the sober-seeming of the night required a solemnity of music peculiarly its own. The night-song of the Mocking-bird, though in many of its modulations it reminds us of that of the Nightingale of Europe, has less of volume in it. There is not more variety, but a less frequent repetition of those certain notes of extacy, which give such a peculiar character, and such wild, intense, and all absorbing feeling to the midnight song of the European bird. Though the more regulated quality of the song of our Nightingale is less calculated to create surprise, it is the more fitted to soothe and console; and that sensation of melancholy which is said to pervade the melody of the European minstrel, is substituted in the midnight singing of our bird by one of thoughtful and tranquil delight.”

The nest of the Mocking-bird is not so elaborate a structure as that of many birds. It is built with little attempt at concealment in some bush or low tree, often an orange near the dwelling-house. One now before me, was built in a bunch of plantains. It consists of a rude platform of loose twigs, in which are interlaced many shreds of old rags; this frame supports and encloses a rather neat cup, composed entirely of fine fibrous roots. Another has the frame almost wholly of rags, from canvas to lace; and the cup of thatch-threads, and horse-hair. Three eggs are commonly laid, measuring ¹⁹⁄₂₀ by ⁷⁄₁₀ inch, of a pale bluish-green, dashed with irregular blotches of pale reddish-brown: they are not perfectly regular in form, their oval having more or less tendency to a cylindrical shape, rather abruptly flattened at the ends. When young are in possession, their presence is no secret; for an unpleasant sound, half hissing, half whistling, is all day long issuing from their unfledged throats; delightful efforts, I dare say, to the fond parents. At this time the old birds are watchful and courageous. If an intruding boy or naturalist approaches their family, they hop from twig to twig, looking on with outstretched neck, in mute but evident solicitude; but any winged visitant, though ever so unconscious of evil intent, and though ever so large, is driven away with fearless pertinacity. The saucy Ani and Tinkling instantly yield the sacred neighbourhood, the brave Mocking-bird pursuing a group of three or four, even to several hundred yards’ distance; and even the John-crow, if he sail near the tree, is instantly attacked and driven from the scene. But the hogs are the creatures that give him the most annoyance. They are ordinarily fed upon the inferior oranges, the fruit being shaken down to them in the evenings; hence they acquire the habit of resorting to the orange-trees, to wait for a lucky windfall. The Mocking-bird feeling nettled at the intrusion, flies down and begins to peck the hog with all his might:—Piggy, not understanding the matter, but pleased with the titillation, gently lies down and turns up his broad side to enjoy it; the poor bird gets into an agony of distress, pecks and pecks again; but only increases the enjoyment of the luxurious intruder, and is at last compelled to give up the effort in despair.

In St. Domingo the Mocking-bird is no less common than in Jamaica: it is there called by the French inhabitants Rosignol, which is but a modification of Rosignor, or lord of the rose, the Spanish name of the Nightingale, probably of Moorish origin.

BLACK-CHEEKED YELLOW-THROAT.[31]
Maryland Yellow-throat. Wils.

We have now arrived at an extensive group of birds of small size, and delicate form, mostly known by the name of Warblers. All of them are merely winter visitants in Jamaica, the greater number retiring to the Northern continent to breed and spend the summer. To Wilson’s and Audubon’s descriptions, I refer the reader, as I have scarcely anything to add to their accounts of these birds.

The Yellow-throat, one of the most beautiful of them, was first seen by me on the 8th of October, on which day I obtained two males, in distinct localities. I do not think the species had arrived long, though some of the Sylvicolæ had been with us nearly two months, for I and my servants were in the woods every day seeking for birds, and this species is too striking to be easily overlooked. In the latter autumn months it was quite common, particularly in marshy places: I have seen it in some numbers hopping busily about the bulrushes in a pond, even descending down the stems to the very surface of the water, and picking minute flies from thence. The stomachs of such as I have examined, contained fragments of beetles and other insects.

In the spring, it seems to linger longer than its fellows; for the last warbler that I saw was of this species, on the 1st of May. Yet Wilson mentions that it habitually appears in Pennsylvania about the middle, or last week, of April; and that it begins to build its nest about the middle of May. The migration of the short-winged birds is probably performed in straggling parties, and extends over a considerable period of time; individuals remaining some time after the greater number have departed.

WORM-EATER.[32]

This is a scarce bird with us. Some three or four specimens are all that have occurred to my observation. It seems, however, to spread rather widely over the diversities of mountain and lowland; for, while the first was obtained on the top of the Bluefields Peak, the next was found close to the sea-shore. Its habits are constant: for we have always observed it perched transversely on the dry trunks of slender dead trees, engaged in peeping into, and picking from, the crevices of the bark. In the stomachs of those which I have examined, I have found comminuted insects. Spiders and caterpillars form the chief portion of its food, according to Wilson.

It is too rare to warrant an opinion as to the period of its arrival or departure: I first met with it on the 7th of October.

WATER THRUSH.[33]
Bessy Kick-up.—River-pink. (Rob. MSS.)

I first saw this amusing species about the end of August, around the muddy margins of ponds in St. Elizabeth and Westmoreland; and immediately afterward they became so abundant, that individuals were to be seen running here and there on the road, all the way from Bluefields to Savanna-le-Mar, especially along the sea-shore, and by the edges of morasses; not at all associating, however. They run rapidly; often wade up to the heel in the water, or run along the twigs of a fallen tree at the brink, now and then flying up into the pimento and orange trees. When walking or standing, the tail is continually flirted up in the manner of the Wagtails, whence the local name of Kick-up, though, perhaps, none but a negro would consider a motion of the tail, kicking. The resemblance of this bird to the Wagtail, Wilson has noticed, and it is very striking in many respects. It walks among the low grass of pastures, picking here and there, wagging the tail, and uttering a sharp chip. Now and then it runs briskly, and snatches something, probably a winged insect, from the grass. Wilson praises its song very highly; in its winter residence with us it merely chips monotonously. The stomachs of several that I have dissected contained water-insects in fragments, and one or two small pond shells.

There is a remarkable analogy in the Water Thrushes to the Snipes and Plovers, in their habits of running by the side of water, of wading, and of flirting up the hinder parts; in the height of the tarsi; and in the elongation of the tertials. The Pea-Dove, which frequents water more than any other of our Doves, has longer tertials than any. Is there any connexion between the lengthening of these feathers, and aquatic habits?

GOLD-CROWNED THRUSH.[34]
Land Kick-up.