NATURAL SCIENCES OF PHILADELPHIA. 283 



(Communicated by the Smithsonian Institution.) 



Notes on the BIRDS of Jamaica. 



BY W. T. MARCH. 



With remarks, 



BY 8. F. BAIRD. 



(Continued from page 154.) 



II. 



CUCULIDjE. 



85. Saurothera vetula. We have met with several nests of the Old Man 

 Bird in this district in the season of 1862, hut all with young birds. According 

 to a note I made of a nest taken in 1848, "The old man bird builds a loose 

 nest of sticks in low bushes, though sometimes more elevated, and lays 34 

 eggs, light green, clouded partially with a thinly dispersed chalky substance, 

 measuring 1 T 7 g by a little more than 1 inch," and I find the accuracy of 

 this note confirmed by eggs collected this season, 1863. 



86. Piaya pluvialis. The nest of the Rainbird is sometimes found in the 

 lowlands, but more frequently in the hills, it is a rough deep cup made of 

 dried sticks loosely put together, and lined with leaves, &c, and generally 

 contains 3 4 white eggs, oval or oblong oval rounded at both ends, variable 

 in size, measuring 1| to 1 by 1^. 



Mr. Gosse's informant must have been mistaken in the eggs he described 

 as belonging to Saurothera. 



PSITTACIDjE. 



I have had no opportunity of seeing a perfect specimen of any of the Macaws 

 said to have been found on the Island. On one of my professional visits to 

 Montego Bay, in 1834, I saw in the possession of a settler from the Mountains 

 of St. James, near Accompong, the head, wings, and tail of a Macaw, which 

 he said he had shot near Maroon Town. I did not at the time take sufficient 

 interest in this branch of Natural History to note the particulars, but I have 

 a perfect recollection that the head and neck were a bright green with red in 

 the forehead and chin, the tail blue and red, and the wing blue and green. 

 About two years after, Mr. Richard Elmas Breary, then residing in the Moun- 

 tains of St. James, assured me that he had on one occasion, whilst traversing 

 the Mountain road from St. James to St. Elizabeth, seen three blue and yel- 

 low Macaws flying high overhead from one ridge to another. Whether the 

 Macaws be permanent residents, or only occasional visitors, I have not heard of 

 any being seen since 1849. Sir Hans Sloane, in his History of Jamaica, pub- 

 lished in 1725, mentioned a blue and yellow parrot. The next notice of the 

 Macaw as found in the Island is by Patrick Brown. In his History of Jamaica, 

 page 472, he states that he has seen one or two in the woods of St. Ann's, and 

 he calls them the blue Macaw of Edwards, evidently the same species as that 

 mentioned by Sloane ; they both refer to a 2d species as introduced. The 

 next is recorded by Robinson, (1765,) and was said to have been shot by Mr. 

 Odell, ten miles east of Lucea, in Hanover ; this is supposed by Mr. Grosse to 

 be either A. tricolor, or an undescribed species. Mr. Hill speaks of others 

 found in the Mountain district, between St. Ann's and Trelawny, which an- 

 swer the description of A. militaris ; and the Rev. Mr. Coward's birds seen in 

 flight in 1842, in St. Elizabeth, were blue and yellow. All the species of the 

 smaller Psittacidse of the Island breed in decayed hollows in the trunks of 

 old trees, generally high up, laying three or four eggs on a slight bedding of 

 trash feathers, and debris of rotten wood ; several pairs of the yellow bill have 

 been known to build in one cavity when the space was sufficiently commo- 



1863.] 



