168 BIRDS OF BERMUDA. 
dotted here and there with patches of highly-cultivated garden, that it is 
hard to find birds, or, when found, to follow them up. Mosquitoes are 
frightfully large and ferocious in summer and autumn, especially in and 
around the ponds and swamps. Many a time have I lost a long- 
expected shot by having to brush the little torments in dozens from my 
nose and eyes. And as to believing a word the good-natured colored 
people tell you about the extraordinary birds they see, it is simply 
impossible. 
But, in spite of these drawbacks, I enjoyed my ornithological labors 
vastly, and look back with pleasure not only to the successful stalk or 
lucky snap-shot which occasionally rewarded my exertions, but also to 
the numerous instructive hours I passed, field-glass in hand, in the deep- 
est recesses of the swamps or on the open shore, watching the agile 
Mniotilta varia and the comical Totanus solitarius, or listening to the 
lond musical “chip” of Seiwrus noveboracensis, and the harsh, grating 
cry of the Phaétons. 
In the following notes I have ie availed myself of those of Col- 
onel Wedderburn (late Forty-second Highlanders) and Mr. Hurdis (for- 
merly controller of customs in the islands), which have already been 
given to the public in a little work, entitled “The Naturalist in Ber- 
muda,” to which I have before alluded; also of the collection of birds 
formed, during the last twenty-five years, by Mr. Bartram, of Stocks 
Point, near St. George’s. I trust I may be held excused for the con- 
stant references to these sources of information, both by the gentlemen 
named and by the indulgent ornithological reader. Colonel Wedder- 
burn and Mr. Hurdis compiled their valuable notes long before my time, 
as may be inferred from the date of the book mentioned (1859); and 
since their departure no one, except my friend Mr. J. M. Jones, appears 
to have kept any record of the bird-life of the islands —more’s the pity. 
With Mr. Bartram, now an elderly man, I struck up a great friendship, 
and I spent many an afternoon poring over his birds. He has about 
one hundred and twelve species, all collected and set up by himself, and 
a carefully kept note-book relating to their capture. His collection is 
the only one of any note in the islands and contains numerous unique 
examples of rare stragglers. An old soldier, settling at the expiration 
of his service on the picturesque promontory of Stocks Point, where he 
still resides, Mr. Bartram has added the study of natural science to that 
of farming; and, in addition to producing the best arrow-root in the 
place, he has a turn at geology, conchology, ornithology, and several 
