CHAPTER V. 



BIRDS AND SOME BIRD-PROBLEMS. 



There are some islands which are so small and isolated 

 that the mere presence, or the mere absence, of certain 

 birds and animals on them, lends them just that touch of 

 interest which they would not otherwise possess. 



If the bare truth be told, we were, after two days spent 

 in a thorough search through the woods of Swan Island, 

 just a little disappointed with what we found. This 

 was because there are so few purely resident birds. 

 On the other hand, the mere fact of the absence of several 

 representatives of families which are, with one or two 

 striking exceptions, found uniformly distributed through- 

 out every island in the Caribbean Sea, made it all the more 

 interesting. There are, for instance, on Swan Island no 

 humming-birds, no members of the tyrant family (with 

 the exception of occasional visitors on migration), no 

 finches, no ground-doves of the genus Chamcepdia, and 

 no honey- creepers ot the genus Coerehay a genus which is, 

 with the very strange exception of Cuba, distributed 

 universally throughout the West Indies. The only other 

 islands in the Caribbean, not mere rocks, on which there 

 are no humming-birds at all are the three Cayman 

 Islands. 



These " sins of omission " give, as we have said, a spice 

 of interest to small isolated islands. They provide little 

 problems for solution . Why humm ing-birds, for instance , 

 should not be found on the neighbouring Caymans is 



