168 A NATURALIST ON DESERT ISLANDS. 



it, uttering cries which made us feel heartily sick of what 

 really seemed a most foul deed. One may try and comfort 

 oneself with the reflection that many birds which pair for 

 life, on being deprived of a mate, have been known to take 

 another within a few hours, but I doubt if it is really 

 much comfort at the time. 



On this occasion we must have seen several hundred 

 parrots, and if so disposed could have shot a dozen or 

 more. To see so many on this morning was rather a 

 surprise ; for on a former visit to the island, four of 

 us spent nearly the whole day dragging our weary limbs 

 through the thorny scrub, with the sole idea of tracking 

 down these birds, and we did not succeed in getting a 

 single specimen, or in seeing more than a dozen or so. 

 Seeing that this belt of thick trees, perhaps a mile wide 

 and four long, is the only place on the island where the 

 parrots are found, it seemed difficult to believe that we 

 could possibly have missed them if many more had been 

 present, for one can certainly hear their cries a mile away, 

 even on level ground, as this was. The only explanation 

 we can silggest for their occasional absence (and this 

 occasion was not the only one) is that the parrots 

 sometimes make expeditions to the island of Margarita, 

 the western end of which lies forty-six miles away to 

 the southward. 



The occasion which I have just quoted, w^hen we found 

 so few parrots, was in February, during a second flying 

 visit to the island ; and this wood was then alive with 

 mocking birds, which were in full song and beginning to 

 nest. A note in my diary states that " the song of this 

 mocking bird is as melodious as any other species I have 

 heard." To wander in this wood under these circum- 

 stances at break of day, when the still air was all vibrant 

 and tremulous with their liquid notes of love, was an 

 experience not soon to be forgotten. The presence of 

 such numbers of mocking birds on such a waterless island 

 seems curious ; but a possible explanation seemed to be the 

 vast numbers of a land-snail (Drymoeus elorigattis), which 



