350 BULLETIN 15 5, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



On the mountains near Furcy the palm-chat builds in pine trees, 

 or other open trees and here makes smaller structures usually occu- 

 pied by two pairs, as the open limbs are not fitted to support the 

 large nest mass common in the lowland palms. Sometimes three or 

 four separate nests were placed in one tree, and on one occasion 

 Abbott found the nest of a grackle (Holoquiscalm) tacked on to the 

 side of a nest of the palm-chat. Wetmore observed palm-chats 

 investigating nests of the weaver-bird {Text or c. cucullatus) appar- 

 ently through curiosity. 



The food of the palm-chat so far as known is vegetable. Wetmore 

 observed them eating blossoms of Cordia serrata and other flower- 

 ing plants, biting them off and swallowing them piecemeal or 

 entire. One bird swallowed four flowers of Cordia, twelve mm. in 

 width in rapid succession, swinging head down and reaching far 

 out to secure them or flying past a cluster of blossoms to cut one off 

 in passage without the slightest hesitation and then alighting to 

 swallow its catch. They also eat berries of various kinds in quan- 

 tity. Danforth found palm berries in the stomachs of those that he 

 shot. No complaint has been made of damage against them and at 

 present the species is not known to have any particular economic 

 importance. Baron de Wimpffen wrote in 1817 that the " flesh is 

 said to be delicious " but it is not known that the palm-chat is 

 regularly hunted. 



The palm-chat is one of the birds of the island that is parasitized 

 by a peculiar anthomyiid fly Philornis pici (Macquart) whose eggs 

 are laid on nestling birds and develop in a sac under the skin of 

 the head or wing. A. Busck 30 described the larva of this fly from 

 a parasitized palm-chat shot September 8. The larva left the bird 

 the same day, burrowed in earth and made a cocoon from which 

 the adult insect emerged September 18. He found these parasites 

 common at San Francisco, Dominican Republic, the infestation in 

 small birds there amounting to nearly 90 per cent of the individuals 

 examined. The insects did not seem to cause injury that was neces- 

 sarily fatal as adult birds that he shot frequently showed a shrivelled 

 larval sac indicating that they had been parasitized in early life. 

 The iris in the palm-chat is reddish brown in both sexes. 



An immature palm-chat taken by Abbott at Laguna on the Samana 

 Peninsula August 7, 1916, is fully grown but still retains the juvenal 

 dress on head and body. The markings and colors in general are 

 similar to those of the adult except that the feathers of the throat 

 and foreneck are almost entirely dark with only faint lighter edgings 

 and the rump is lighter being buffy brown. 



ar-roc. Ent. Soc. Washington, vol. 7, 1907, pp. 2-3. 



