86 
BIRDS OF THE BAHAMA ISLANDS. 
with its peculiar notes. It is very retiring in its habits, rarely 
being seen in the open. The inhabitants claim that it destroys 
great quantities of fruit, but I cannot answer for the truth of this 
statement, as the stomachs of all those dissected by me contained 
only insects and berries, and I have never seen it eating fruit of 
any kind. 
As I never had the good fortune of finding the nest of this 
species, I quote from Mr. Gosse, who says, “ One of those gigantic 
and hoary cotton-trees, which are the pride of a Jamaica forest, or 
some other tree equally tall, is usually selected by this Bullfinch for 
its abode. At the extremity of an immense horizontal limb, it builds 
a nest of rude materials, as large as a half-bushel measure, the open- 
ing being near the bottom. I have seen the bird enter this mon- 
strous structure, but have had no opportunity of examining it. Dr. 
Robinson observes that ‘ the Black Bullfinch builds a nest as big as 
a Blackbird’s cage, and, by the artful contrivance of this little volatile, 
the whole has the simple appearance of a heap of trash, flung on 
some bough of a tree, as it were, by accident, so that nobody would 
suppose it to be anything else.’ And in another passage, he records 
having found the nest at Negril, on the 2 2d of April, 1761, at the 
summit of a cabbage-palm, eighty-one feet high, which he caused to 
be felled. ‘ Among the spadices of this tree was fixed, how, I can- 
not tell, the nest of the Black Bullfinch, made up of various matter, 
viz., old cane-trash fibres, silk-cotton, some dry leaves, and at the 
bottom many tendrils of climbing shrubs, and a very small species of 
epidendrum , or green wyth, common in this parish. In it I found 
