4 MEMOIRS OF THE NUTTALL ORNITHOLOGICAL CLUB 



iron either to charm the eye or to offer decent protection from a torrid sun. 

 A few hours of gorgeous painted sea, blue daubed with ivory white, and 

 Havana breaks into view with an almost inconceivable contrast: Castle 

 and forts, some begun long before Jamestown or Plymouth came into being, 

 and a great yellow and white and blue city, low, narrow-streeted and porti- 

 coed, still topped in part with the old red-tiled roofs, Spain's most decora- 

 tive legacy to the Americas. And yet the Cuba of Havana is now hybrid, 

 and modified not for the better, unfortunately. Nevertheless, the old Cuba 

 of Colonial days, of simple hospitality and sincere courtesy, still exists on 

 many a distant ranch and in ancient towns but little changed by several 

 centuries' passing. So it is also with the landscape. The environs of the 

 cities along the northern coast of the central Provinces offer not only the 

 beauty of novelty but the charm of intensive tropical cultivation. The 

 broad groves of royal palms, at once majestic and graceful, invade the 

 very suburbs of the cities and the great red-green stands of mango trees 

 dispense a shade more dense and welcome than do our own maples and 

 beeches. Still all this is not Cuba, and the bird lover from the North is 

 surely disappointed at the few, though wholly satisfactory strangers which 

 he meets. Anis by the roadside, with their languid volplaning flight. 

 Ground Doves, Cuban Crackles, and perhaps an Oriole in a pinon hedgerow, 

 are about all he can expect. 



If the reader would but charter an old-time guardano, and cross Havana 

 harbor and walk quietly through the almost endless jungle of beach grape 

 and Ipomea stretching far to the eastward of Alorro Castle, he would soon 

 strike acquaintance with the Todies, the Gray Kingbirds, Ricord's Hummer 

 and some others — only a few to be sure — of Cuba's choicest offerings 

 to the Northern stranger. Few, however, know that this good fortune 

 Is at their beck and call for a real or two. Those who may fare afield to 

 La Providencia or Toledo, sugar plantations easily accessible, may chance 

 upon the winter flocks of the common Cuban Redwing which spend their 

 days trilling metallically in the orange trees about the mill yards. Migrants 

 they may see in swarms. Palm Warblers, Black-throated Blues and 

 Redstarts, until they wonder how all North America can furnish such 

 hordes of birds too seldom seen at home. 



I must try, however, to convey some impression of what may be seen 

 by the wanderer who, tolerant of mediaeval sanitation and the many petty 

 hardships of primitive country life in the Spanish-American tropics, is 

 willing to go out into the hills and swamps and forest, yearly growing more 

 inaccessible but where primeval conditions may still be found. In the 



