168 TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO BULLETIN. [XX.2,3&4. 



The best known locality is probably the cave at the head of the 

 Oropuche River in the north-east of the Island. It was known to 

 Leotaud and is mentioned by Wall and Sawkins {Geology of Trinidad 

 1860 p. 29). This was the cave which the late President Roosevelt 

 visited in 1916 and of which a short account, with some photographs 

 taken by Mr. Urich was given in Scribners Magazine for 1917. 



Another short account of this cave was given by Mr. Urich m 

 the Journal of the Trinidad Field Naturalists Club II 1895 231-234 

 On p. 23 of the same Journal is a statement that 175 birds had been 

 taken from this cave and that they were getting scarcer every year. 

 "A very limited number are now offered for sale on the market." This 

 last remark refers to the use that is made of the young birds both for 

 eating and for rendering down in water over a fire to collect the oil 

 and fat that they contain. 



I visited this cave in company with Mr. Urich and Mr. Freeman 

 on April 23, 1916. The opening is twenty or thirty feet in height 

 and about twelve feet wide at the bottom, slightly oblique and 

 margined with vegetation. After a few yards the cave takes a slight 

 turn which produces extreme darkness and here the birds are nesting 

 on the walls. After perhaps forty yards the cave becomes lower and 

 a second part can be reached by stooping. There are however no 

 birds in this portion. 



In the front part of the cave there were thirty or forty nests on 

 ledges on the walls from six feet above the level of the river to the 

 highest parts of the cave. The nest is a low pillar about fourteen 

 inches across, with a slight depression on the top not more than an 

 inch deep in the middle. Judging from the appearance of the nests, 

 successive layers must be added at successive nesting seasons, and 

 the nest gradually rises to project out of the layers of guano with 

 which it is surrounded. The material of which it is made appears to 

 be largely wood fibre. 



At the time of our visit the birds were nesting. Some nests 

 contained one, two, or three white rounded eggs ; others contained 

 young, some just hatched and naked, others with feathers developmg 

 and apparently two to three weeks old. 



The birds feed during the night on the fruits of various trees, 

 chiefly palms, and during the day remam in the cave sleeping and 

 digesting. The kernels of the palm seed are not digested and are 

 either evacuated or disgorged on to the heaps of guano with which 

 the ledges and floor of the cave are covered wherever the water is not 

 flowing. There the seeds germinate and grow to forests of etiolated 

 palm seedlings which die off only to be replaced by fresh growth. 



