152 
sometimes we hear him in the lone wood, uttering click, click, click, without variation of tone or 
His song, which 1 have heard only in spring, is rich and 
he sits in some thick tree, or wood, particularly at 
a broken strain, and often in a subdued tone, as if 
intermission, for many minutes together. 
mellow, much like the English Blackbird's ; 
earliest dawn, and pours forth his clear notes in 
singing only to please himself. 
“I happened to wound slightly two of these birds on the same day, which I placed in a cage. 
They were free and easy from the first, very clamorous, lively, and even headlong in their sudden 
movements, I found that they would seize and devour with eagerness cockroaches, hard beetles, 
worms, and even small lizards. 1 gave them a bunch of the ripe, but dry and insipid, berries of a 
species of Ficus, which they readily picked off and ate. The fruit of this fig they are fond of ina 
state of freedom ; and such is their impudence that they prevent the Baldpate Pigeons, though so 
much bigger, from partaking. The Baldpates would willingly eat the little figs also, but the 
Hopping Dicks scream and fly at them, and peck their backs, so as to keep them fluttering from 
branch to branch, reluctant to depart, yet unable to eat in comfort. 
* At the break of day, if we pass along a wooded mountain road, such as that lonely one at 
Basin-spring, in Westmoreland, particularly when the parching winds called norths have set in, in 
December and January, we see the Hopping Dick bounding singly along the ground in every part ; 
but during the day they resort in numbers to the diminished springs and ponds which yet remain, 
where, after quenching their thirst, they enjoy the luxury of a bathe. 
* In the high mountains behind Spanish Town, this bird is called the *'Twopenny Chick’; but 
in the parishes of Westmoreland and St. Elizabeth, 1 have heard him distinguished only by the 
homely appellation which 1 have adopted. He is not confined to any particular locality. Ыы) 
Dr. Chamberlaine (Jam. Alm.) has ‘never seen him in the lowlands.’ But around Bluefields he is i 
abundant, especially in the little belt of wood that girds the sandy sea-beach at Belmont, where one 
may meet with him at all times. Im the pastures of Mount Edgecumbe he is no less common. In 
the highest districts, as Bluefields Peaks, though І have sometimes seen him, he is chiefly represented 
by his congener, the Glass-eye: in the solitudes of Basin-spring, a lower elevation, both species are 
= 
= 
= 
numerous. 
“Та some ‘Contributions to Ornithology,’ by Dr. Richard Chamberlaine, published in the 
Companion to the Jamaica Almanack for 1842, this bird is described. The following observations 
are there quoted from a letter of Mr. Hill's to the Doctor :— I paid a visit the other day to the 
Highgate mountains, a districtin which our native Ouzel, the Hopping Dick, is exceedingly abundant. 
On asking one morning the name of the bird, whose clear, mellow-toned whistle I was then listening 
to, a negro told me it was the Hopping Dick, and that they “always hear him when the long days 
begin." Тһе long days had not yet begun; but at early dawn, while the distant horizon was seen 
but faintly gleaming through the dull grey break of daylight, and many of these Merles were gliding 
from one thicket to another, and dashing across the road with that bounding run from which they | Ши 
derive the sobriquet of Hopping Dick, one bird anticipated the season of song, by repeatedly sounding | Пи 
two or three cadences of that full deep whistle with which he salutes the lengthening year. [| 
* *'The forests skirting the mountain are his favourite haunt. If he frequents the open slopes Lr 
and crests of the hills, he glides from tree to tree, just above the surface of the grass. If he rises "blu 
above the lower branches of the pimento, or into some of the loftier shrubs, it is to visit the еј 
Tillandsias, от parasitical wild-pines, to drink from within the heart-leaves at those reservoirs of Ë їй 
collected dews which are the only resource of the birds in these high mountains. His dark sooty Му 
plumage, his brilliant orange bill, and his habit, when surprised or disturbed, of escaping by running 
or flying low, and sounding all the while his alarm scream till he gets away into the thicket, completely 
identify him with the European Blackbird. 
