Birds. 6933 



Portland Salina, in Vere, they were numerous, and I saw them not 

 unfrequenily floating in lines of ten or twelve against the bright 

 morning sky. In October I fell in with a flock of six, reposing on 

 the mangroves of the great lagoon near Dry Harbour, and all along 

 the coast of St. Ann's and St. Mary's they were to be met with 

 wherever the locality was suitable. Here they appeared in the same 

 flocks and carried their associating tendencies so far as to admit other 

 species into their company. I first observed this in a little flock, with 

 a blue egret {E. cosralea) among them, which I pursued some time in 

 a boat on the lagoon behind Annotto Bay ; the darker bird flew and 

 alighted with them exactly as one of the rest. And here on the Wag 

 Water I frequently saw them in close company with E. leuce, 

 a giant in comparison, and thus four or five of these beautiful birds of 

 two species stepped stately in various graceful altitudes round the 

 same bright bit of water. The stomach of one I dissected contained 

 the little freshwater prawns; the posterior portion of the CBSophagus 

 acts as a crop, and was distended with a mass of about seventy 

 or eighty of them. Their visit here is also transient just during the 

 rains. 



" The third white species is your E. nivea, easily distinguished 

 from the last two by the ashy tips to the wings, the colour of the bill 

 and feet ; and it is scarcely less so by its habits. I never saw 

 it but quite solitary, though several might be fishing within short dis- 

 tances of each other. It is much more numerous and far more fear- 

 less than the other species, and is thus easily approached and shot. 

 During the rainy season it is by far the most widely-distributed : 

 scarcely a cattle-pond is without its occasional visitant. I found this 

 solitary bird on the stream which flows through the small amount of 

 cleared land round Freeman's Hall, the more remarkable as the 

 extensive forest all round offers no other suitable localities ; except 

 a bird now and then to be seen near the morass, it has disappeared 

 as the rest. 



*' Blue Egret {Egretta ccsrulea). Though the deep lavender-blue 

 and empurpled neck render its plumage a contrast to the last three 

 species, it is not less beautiful. It was tolerably common during the 

 rains, and I have seen a solitary bird once or twice about the lagoons. 

 But in Vere I found it not uncommon during the driest weather. 

 Along the Milk River, as late as April, it still associated in little com- 

 panies of three or four, which would rise with legs hanging and necks 

 stretched to alight a few hundred yards further on, as the approach 

 of the canoe disturbed them. I found the stomach of a bird shot 



