94 
BIRDS OF THE BAHAMA ISLANDS. 
and small earthworms, but he took no notice of these ; then I gath- 
ered a few bunches of fiddlewood berries, which I had no sooner 
stuck into his cage than I was pleased to see him hop towards them 
and pick off the ripe ones with much relish and discrimination. I 
was informed, in a wild state, he sometimes eats the sour-sop. As 
I had none of this fruit at hand, I gave him pieces of a ripe custard- 
apple and of a guava. He immediately began to eat of each, pluck- 
ing off portions of the pulp, and also taking up the fleshy ovaria of 
which the former is composed, which he chewed with his beak till 
the inclosed seed was pressed out. 
“ But all these were forsaken so soon as I presented to him bunches 
of ripe pimento, black and sweet. These he picked off greedily, 
masticating each in the beak, until the seeds, which I suppose were 
too hotly aromatic for his taste, fell out. It was amusing to see the 
persevering efforts he made to obtain those berries which happened 
to be a little beyond his reach He would jump from perch to perch 
impatiently, gazing with outstretched neck at the tempting fruit, then 
jump and look again ; then reach forward to them, until in the 
endeavor, he would overbalance himself, and perform an involun- 
tary somerset. Nothing daunted, however, he persevered until he 
ventured to do what he had been several times on tiptoe to do, leap 
on the bunch itself; and this he continued to do, though with 
some failures, holding on in a scrambling way, now by a leaf, now 
by the berries themselves, until he had rifled the bunch of the ripest. 
After I had kept him about a week, during which his liveliness and 
good temper had much attached him to me, though he made not 
