No. 7. — A Collection of Birds from the Cayman Islands. 

 By Outram Bangs. 



In the year 1911 the well-known collector, W. W. Brown, Jr., 

 spent the spring and early summer, April to July, in the Caymans. 

 He visited all three islands and made a practically complete collection 

 of the resident, breeding land birds of the group. This beautiful lot 

 of skins, in Brown's inimitable make, fortunately remained intact and 

 was secured for the Museum of Comparative Zoology. Below I give 

 an annotated list of the collection which represents only the resident 

 ornis of the islands, being happily free from migrants. 



In the Ibis for 1911, (ser. 9, 5, p. 137-161), Mr. P. R. Lowe published 

 a list of the birds of the Cayman Islands. Lowe's account of the 

 islands and his description of them is so good and complete as to leave 

 nothing more to be said. He also brought up to date all bird collecting 

 that had been done there. I must, however, give my opinion upon the 

 sources whence the bird life peculiar to the Caymans has been derived. 



Lowe justly states that on account of the very recent origin of the 

 islands no genus and no very peculiar forms occur there alone. In the 

 main, this is true, but I think for the moment he had forgotten Mimo- 

 cichla ravida. This bird bears no close relationship to any other 

 existing species of the genus. We must, however, bear in mind that 

 Jamaica at present, alone among the Greater Antilles, is without a 

 species of Mimocichla. It is highly probable that a form similar to 

 M. ravida once occurred there and that the Cayman bird, now itself 

 on the verge of extinction, was derived from that form. 



Coereba sharpei is a species of uncertain origin. The genus Coereba 

 has been in the near past, and perhaps is still, so very plastic that the 

 relationships of the various forms are hard to trace. 



Dendroica viteUina (which also occurs in Swan Island) and D. 

 crawfordi, quite clearly indicate an instance, rather rare among birds, 

 of a migratory species establishing itself upon islands that lie on the 

 line of passage and becoming differentiated there; for clearly the 

 nearest relation of these two wood-warblers is the migratory North 

 American Dendroica discolor. 



Three other peculiar forms were, I believe, received directly from 



