48 MEMOIRS OF THE NUTTALL ORNITHOLOGICAL CLUB 



63. Rostrhamus sociabilis plumbeus Ridgway. 

 Everglade Kite; Caracolero or Gavilan Caracolero. 



The Everglade Kite is common in the Cienaga where Ampullarias 

 abound. It also is usually to be seen about Lake Ariguanabo, and was 

 reported by Gundlach from ponds in the Cauto \'alley. My old companion, 

 Fermin Cervera, a former Spanish soldier now resident in Cuba, wrote 

 me that on May 12, 1915, he shot four "snail hawks," and on the same 

 day found two nests, each containing their eggs. Those of one nest were 

 almost ready to hatch, those of the other recently laid. Both nests were 

 in a willow (Clavellina) tree in the middle of Lake Ariguanabo and were 

 about a yard and a half above the water-level. The nests were well made 

 of twigs and grasses. The eggs are now in the Museum of Comparative 

 Zoology, and are the first recorded for this bird from Cuba, for Gundlach 

 never found it breeding. It comes and goes in a most inexplicable manner, 

 and often on visits to Ariguanabo I have not seen a bird. 



Its flight is singularly like a Marsh Hawk's, only more flapping and 

 labored. As is well known, its sole food consists of Ampullarias, snails 

 which from dusk to dawn often swim with the foot expanded, hanging 

 from the surface film of the water. The bird feeds at morn and eve, and has 

 its regular stations where the snails are skilfully shucked unbroken, and 

 where the heaps of shells accumulate and last many years. The Kites inevi- 

 tably are growing rarer in Cuba, as in Florida, for draining goes on apace. 



64. Elanoides forficatus forficatus (Linne). 

 Swallow-tailed Kite. 



A very irregular visitor which I never have seen in Cuba. The following 

 records are given by Gundlach. "Many years ago" several seen flying over 

 a lake near Cardenas; "later" a skin made by a friend who shot one from a 

 flock of about fifty seen near Bahia Honda; "observed" at Cienaga de 

 Zapata. He then adds three more definite dates: In 1856, when a band 

 appeared near the outskirts of Havana; five years later (1861), when one 

 was killed near Havana; again in five years (1866), when another was 

 killed east of Guanabacoa. 



