on the Olive Finch.



171



I cannot do better than add here a few more extracts from

Gosse’s Birds of Jamaica , for lie gives ns much information on

the nesting habits of Olive and Dusky Finches in the wild state:

and the digressive references to birds and wasps are too interest¬

ing and instructive to need apology.


Page 252 :—“ O11 one occasion, some twenty or thirty of

the Yellow-throated Grass-bird (Olive Finch) constructed a mass

of nests within the wide crutch of a baobab tree, and lived in

common.” This is suggestive ; but the last four words are not

to be accepted right away, I think. Mr. Hill was the authority

for this note.


Page 251:—“ Mr. Hill has favoured me with the following

note. ‘ Nests of the Grass-bird are frequently brought to me,

but without distinguishing between the yellow and the black-

throated species. A nest in the garden, built in a Nerium

oleander , by the latter (in July), enables me to set down a remark

or two. I see no difference in the structure of the nests of the

two species. They are both domed nests, made of pliable dry

grass, and lined with horse-hair. This nest is built between the

forks of the long vertical stems of the oleander, or South Sea rose.

Three other vertical stems press it close, and the leaves quite

canopy it over. The substratum of the nest, on which it may be

said to be bedded, is a mass of long linen rags, wound in and

round the forked branch.


‘ It is quite true that the Grass-bird very frequently selects

a shrub 011 which the wasps have built, fixing the entrance close

to their cells. I saw a nest in this secure situation a few years

ago ; it was pointed out to me as illustrating a habit of the

yellow-throated species (Olive Finch).’ ” At page 85, writing of

the Banana Quit, Gosse says:—“The nest of this bird is very

frequently, perhaps usually, built in those low trees and bushes

from whose twigs depend the paper nests of the Brown Wasps,

and in close contiguity with them. The Grassquits are said to

manifest the same predilection ; it is a singular exercise of in¬

stinct, almost of reason; for the object is doubtless the defence

afforded by the presence of the formidable insects.” It appears

that it is not only in Jamaica that birds seek the protection of

wasps for their nests. In December last, at p. 446 of Canary and



