APPENDIX D 



one of the former to learn its food, and an overenthusiastic 

 Haitian assistant did away with two others. 



On six evenings an owl flew low over our submerged 

 light, swooping time after time close to the illumination, 

 hoping perhaps, for the insects which experience had led 

 the bird to look for near lights on land. So much for bird 

 life from the schooner. 



I had occasion to make many trips to a sandy beach at 

 Bizoton, about a mile west of the Lieutenant and the Navy 

 Yard. Now and then I spent an hour walking about the 

 fields immediately back of the shore at this point. As 

 almost everywhere in Haiti the land showed signs of present 

 or past human occupation. A thin fringe of mangroves 

 stretched along the beach, growing in mud-flats which were 

 a paradise for fiddler crabs. In my beat I included the 

 outskirts of a sugar-cane plantation and several rice or 

 paddy fields. The overgrown embankments of the latter 

 looked like the trenches of past battle-fields. Along these 

 was a scattering of young trees, with a few coconut and 

 royal palms. 



In this area, about one-quarter of a mile square, I ob- 

 served thirty-six species of birds during my stay, shooting 

 some, watching others. Elsewhere on the island I obtained 

 specimens or identified forty-six more, making a total of 

 eighty-two species altogether. My list of Haitian birds 

 follows, as closely as possible, the third edition of the 

 American Ornithologists' Union Check List. 



The following notes were made between January second 

 and May eighteenth, 1927: 



San Domingan Grebe, Colymhus dominicus 



Six seen in pairs at close range, swimming and diving in 

 Etang Miragoane, March 2, 1927. A second species of 

 Grebe was seen but I could distinguish no certain marks of 

 identification. 



Laughing Gull, Chroicocephalus atricilla 



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