40 BULLETIN 15 5, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



birds is greatly augmented by swarms of migrants that reach the 

 island as the northern summer closes, and remain until spring and 

 the approach of the breeding season call them again northward, 

 but even after the first of May when the spring migration is prac- 

 tically at an end resident birds may be found in fair abundance by 

 one who searches properly. 



The explanation of this strange difference between fact and current 

 information may be found in the lack of striking song among the 

 resident forms, and the silence of migrants and winter residents that 

 reserve their principal vocal efforts for sojourn in their northern 

 homes. The mockingbird, the vireo, and the thrush are the only 

 persistent singers whose notes are loud and striking. Crows gabble 

 among the palm trees, the woodpecker calls, parrots shriek and 

 squall, pigeons utter their hooting and cooing calls, and sudden out- 

 bursts of sound come from flocks of palm-chats. Aside from these 

 striking bird notes are few. The little yellow-throated grassquit 

 sings constantly but so modestly that its notes may be scarcely heard 

 with the singer near at hand in plain view. The same is true of 

 a number of other species that are commonly distributed. Again 

 breeding seasons for different individuals may vary through a con- 

 siderable period so that only a part of each species may be in song 

 at one time. There is thus no concentration of annual song in a 

 brief period of weeks as in regions with definite seasons. 



As these lines were first written on a pleasant morning in early 

 June, 1927, in the woodlands of Plummers Island in the Potomac 

 River a few miles above the city of Washington the notes of wood 

 thrush, red-eyed vireo, Kentucky warbler, cardinal, tufted titmouse, 

 and a host of minor songsters greeted the ear, while an hour earlier 

 in open fields not far distant there were heard the songs of blue- 

 birds, robins, house wrens, chats, chewinks, thrashers, and field 

 sparrows. At the same time memory carried back ten days to a 

 last excursion in the highlands of the Dominican Republic where 

 squamated pigeons, trogons, solitaires, parrots and strange flycatch- 

 ers furnished the avian chorus, while other equally interesting forms 

 went silently about their affairs, and one is convinced that it is to 

 their less exuberant notes and not to smaller numbers that we must 

 attribute the current belief that Hispaniola has no birds. The ap- 

 parent paucity is due to lack in perception on the part of the observer. 



Of the known forms of birds of Hispaniola there are 68 that are 

 endemic in the area considered, most of these being found on the 

 main island, with a few confined to Gonave, Tortue, Navassa, or 

 Saona. Most of these peculiar forms have allies in the other islands 

 of the Greater Antillean group but a few, as Rupornis ridgnvayi, 

 Speotyto c. dominicensis, Loximitrh dominicensis, Loxia mcgaplaga, 

 and Brachyspiza c. antillarum are here isolated in their distribution, 



