158 A NATURALIST ON DESERT ISLANDS. 



strenuous work really means, let him try to catch lizards, 

 with only a butterfly net as a weapon, in a blazing tropical 

 sun. There are many better ways of catching these lively 

 reptiles than with a net ; but they aU entail time, which 

 was just the thing we lacked. I do not know just how 

 many million lizards there may be on Blanquilla — 

 certainly a great many more than we have seen before or 

 since, in any part of the world : yet, plentiful beyond 

 imagination as they were, the cactus " prickles " beat 

 them easily ; and every dab at a lizard, successful or other- 

 wise, produced at least one prickly horror, till the net 

 itself looked like some strange and horrible new variety 

 of these strange plants. That lizards hibernate, even in 

 the Tropics, was evident from the fact that whereas in 

 April the island semed overrun with them, in a subsequent 

 January visit their numbers had diminished to such an 

 extent that we hardly seemed to notice them. 



The very first bird we saw, when we had once set foot 

 on shore, near the cocoanut grove, was a humming-bird 

 {Chrysolampis moschitus), and the second was a parrot 

 (C. rothschildi). The humming-bird was glancing about 

 beneath the flowerless branches of the tall mangrove and 

 manchineel trees ; every now and then making a little 

 dash at some insects on the under-surface of the leaves. 

 The parrot flew screaming from the branching head of a 

 cocoanut tree. Both birds were sufficiently surprising 

 to see on such a barren-looking island ; and we shall have 

 more to say about them further on. 



In the meantime, more birds were making themselves 

 evident, as we began to extend our search around the old 

 man's plantation. His patch of cotton was crowded 

 with ground-doves (C. pevpallida) , which kept jumping 

 up from the ground at almost every step we took. Many 

 golden warblers [D. rufopileata) , looking like so many 

 canaries, were creeping about in the patches of cactus 

 scrub, where some flowering bushes [Lantana) appeared to 

 afford them plenty of occupation. Tyrant-birds {T. domini- 

 censis), winter-visitors from further north, frequented 



