42 A NATURALIST ON DESERT ISLANDS. 



with a certain well-known advertisement. Some of us, 

 I think, nearly got the thrush " habit." But it was all 

 no good. 



As a matter of sober fact, Mr. A. said he sometimes 

 saw some in October, but October is a month of gales 

 and hurricanes, and it is possible that these birds had been 

 blown here from Cuba, or even from the Cayman Islands. 

 Why, too, should one only be able to see a resident bird 

 in autumn on such a small island? And so we write No. 3, 

 too, as a doubtful number, or possibly extinct. 



Number 9, the black ani or "savanna blackbird," 

 as it is sometimes called in the West Indies, is now, on the 

 other hand, an almost certain resident. It is, moreover, 

 an interesting one, in spite of the fact that it is also met 

 with in many of the West Indian Islands. When Mr. 

 Townsend was at Swan Island in 1886 he met with 

 none of these birds, whereas at the present time there are 

 at least four or five flocks. It is impossible that he could 

 have missed them, and they have not been " introduced," 

 so it seems certain that at some date between his and our 

 visit they have been blown here and have established 

 themselves. 



These weird looking birds, with their extraordinary 

 parrot-like bills, which are thinned off along the strongly 

 arched upper-border into almost a cutting edge ; with their 

 long tails and uniformly glossy black, or nearly purplish, 

 plumage, are, though of the cuckoo tribe, a sociable 

 sort of creatures. They follow one another about, uttering 

 a strange melancholy mewing sort of cry, which has been 

 variously interpreted as " Going awa-a-ay," " How-d'ye " 

 or " Ani-Ani." In other localities where they are found, 

 these cuckoos frequent open spaces or the wooded margins 

 of savannas, and this was just where we came across our 

 first flock on Swan Island. A point of interest in their 

 being found here now lies in this predilection for open 

 clearings, for until comparatively quite recent times 

 Swan Island was uniformly and densely wooded. With 

 the arrival of the phosphate diggers and the present 



