212



in forgetfulness he picks up a chicken or so, are excused. He is very tame,

hangs about the houses closely, and wherever there is a pole, an article

which is a good deal dotted about, you are sure to see a crow on the top of

it. After one of the warm torrential showers, which come now and again,

it is quite grand to see a row of poles topped by crows with their wings

fully spread to dry.


In the garden of our hotel at Kingston, I saw a couple of Mocking-

Birds, grey brown in colour, with white feathers in their long jerking tails.

They are called Nightingales, and their song is a mixture of Thrush and

Blackbird, but louder and more melodious than either. The birds seemed

very tame, and picked about in the grass. More numerous are exaggerated

Blackbirds, with a longer tail than our English friend and bigger, but minus

the bright orange bill. One of these had a nest, about which he or she

was quarrelling with another, but there was nothing in it. As I have no

books with me except Russ’s Speaking Parrots, I am not able to identify

the birds, which is annoying. We saw no small birds in Kingston, but on

the way to Mandeville, two and a half hours by train, through beautiful

tropical vegetation, we saw a good many, all of sober colours and so quick

in their movements that it was impossible to describe them. I am told the

most interesting of all is the Solitaire Thrush, but have no hope of pene¬

trating to the fastnesses in the woods and mountains, where alone he is to

be found. What, I suppose, everyone desires most to see is the Humming

Bird. On first view the common kind, which is very numerous in some

places and occasional in all, is disappointing, giving one the impression of

a very dark blue object, and which flies in a curious upright position, as it

were, standing on its tail in the air. But as I was watching one darting

from flower to flower of a group of caunas, not in the manner of the

Humming Bird Hawk Moth, as we are usually told, but hovering, and, as it

were, hanging upright at the lip of the blossom, it suddenly flew to my

parasol and tried the tips of several of the spokes. I thus had a very close

view, when the beautiful iridescence on the little thing’s breast, back, and

tail was visible, shining in red and purple lustre. It was a stout little bird,

about as big as a Wren, and not the vision of fragility I expected. But

there are, of course, smaller ones which I have not yet seen. There is no

bird shop in Kingston, nor, so far as I have been able to ascertain, anywhere

else in the island; and although I took several electric car journey’s all

round the town, besides buggy drives, for the express purpose of searching

out parrots and other birds in private possession, I only saw one, a nice

Cuban Amazon, hanging in one of the terrible cages made of flat wide

3 netal bars we have most of us seen acting prison to newly-imported birds,

outside a queer little booth-shop, devoted, if I may remember aright, to the

sale of charcoal, castor oil and mangoes.


At Mandeville, however, we found three parrots, two of the little

native Amazons which are found in the mountains, and are, I imagine,

Salle’s Amazon (e), and one Yellow front. The latter is not an interesting bird,

but one of the little things talks very nicely. They are kept in the same

dreadful cages, very small, desperately dirty, and without a vestige of sand.



(e). Salle’s Amazon (Chrysotis ventralis) seems to be confined to San Domingo.

Probably the little Active Amazon (C. agilis) is intended, or possibly the Red-throated

Amazon (C. collaria). —R. P.



