ORNITHOLOGICAL DISCOVERIES 24<1 



BLUE HONEY-CREEPER 



Cyaiicrpcs cyaneus cyaneus (Linn.) 



This graceful creeper fulfills all the ideals of one's 

 thoughts of tropical birds. We know it chiefly as an inhabi- 

 tant of the tree-tops and seen against the bright sky it showed 

 only as a slender, thin-billed, little black bird. But when 

 we saw it against foliage, its plumage blazed out in all its 

 brilliance. With a body scarcely four inches long it glowed 

 a brilliant pui-ple blue, with feet of scarlet, crown of pale 

 h\v\e, back and wings of blackest jet, the latter splashed with- 

 in b}^ pigment of brightest gold. 



We watched them in the jungle — the brilliant cock birds 

 and the dull-striped hens of olive green. In early July, they 

 came in numbers with the hummingbird hosts to the honey- 

 laden blossoms of the cashew trees. But their life other- 

 wise remained a mystery until we found a nest on the seven- 

 teenth day of July. And both nest and eggs sustained the 

 admiration which we felt for the adult blue honey-creepers. 



The nest was a fairy network suspended over the water, 

 as thin and evanescent as the shadow of an oriole's purse, and 

 the eggs were the strangest of all eggs in the world — they 

 were black. The home of the honey-creepers was delicately 

 caught in the base of a great heart-leaf of a water arum, the 

 mucka-mucka, beloved of hoatzins, and it swung in every 

 breath of air barely four feet above the surface of the river's 

 edge. It was exceedingly thin-walled, every detail of the 

 eggs and the setting bird being plainly visible. And yet it 

 was most durable and quite impossible to tear or even appre- 

 ciably alter in shape, for it was composed of fine, but very 

 strong thread-like rootlets, all of a uniform dark brown or 

 black color. The small round opening was at the top, ob- 

 liquely facing one side. The nest itself was 17 cm. high, 

 and 8 cm. across, while the nest hollow within measured 4 cm. 

 in diameter by 7 cm. deep. 



There were two eggs, astonishingly black or purple- 



