482 BIRDS OF BRITISH GUIANA. 



Eggs. "Two in number; black or purple-black, with faint 

 traces of pale lavender ground-colour, distinctly revealed at the 

 small end, etc." (Beebe). 



Range in Britisli Guiana. Mount Roraima, Ituribisi River, 

 Supenaam River, Bartica, Bonasika River, Maukauria River, 

 Mazaruni River, Aarawai River, Great Falls Demerara River 

 (^McConnell collectiori) ; Mount Roraima, Merume Mountains, 

 Kamakusa, Bartica ( Whitely) ; Hoorie Creek, Aremu (Beebe). 



JExtralimital Range. Surinam (Penard), Cayenne {Linn^, 

 Trinidad, Tobago, Colombia, North-east Brazil, Central America 

 to Mexico and Cuba. 



Habits. According to Schomburgk (Reis. Guian. iii. p. 675) 

 this species is distributed throughout British Guiana. It roams 

 about in small flocks in the small plantations and on the tops o£ 

 trees in the neighbourhood of rivers. Schomburgk states that its 

 nidi-fi cation was unknown to him. 



The following notes have been copied from Beebe (Tropical Wild 

 Life in British Guiana, p. 241) : — " This graceful creeper fulfils all 

 the ideals of one's thoughts of tropical birds. "We know it chiefly 

 as an inhabitant of the tree-tops, and seen against the briglit 

 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 ]"et, the latter splashed within by 

 pigment of brightest gold. 



" 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 niucka-uiucka, 

 beloved of hoatzins, and it swung in every breath of air barely 

 four feet above the surface of the river's edge. It was exceed- 

 ingly 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 appreciably alter in shape, for it was 

 composed of fine, but very strong thread-like rootlets, all of a 

 uniform dark brown or black colour. The small round opening 

 was at the top, obliquely facing one side. The nest itself was 



