ORNITHOLOGICAL DISCOVERIES 241 



BLUE HONEY-CREEPER 



Cyancrpcs 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 purple blue, with feet of scarlet, crown of pale 

 blue, back and wings of blackest jet, the latter splashed with- 

 in by 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- 



