bird moves up the trunk by a succession of well-marked 
hops and not at all in the even, creeping manner of Certhia, 
It also carries itself more like a Woodpecker. 
In the afternoon I shot two good birds, a Coa t®so- 
thlvpis pityama in a bois immortelle in front of the house 
and a Ruby Topaz Hummer in a flowering tree near our ajouba. 
In the late afternoon we walked up the road and 
lingered there until dark. For the fourth time we found 
our big Goatsucker ( Nyctibius .iamaicensis ) on his favorite 
stub and for the second time we saw him come to it from 
the forest. He appeared about half an hour after sunset 
high above the tops of the tallest trees and on set wings, 
virithout a single flap, sailed slowly and majestically two 
hundred yards or more until directly above the stub to 
which he descended in a broad spiral sweep of two turns, 
ending a yard or so below the top of the stub, when he pitched 
sharply upward, closing his wings just as his feet struck 
the perch, I have rarely if ever seen so beautiful a 
flight before and for a Goatsucker it was simply extra¬ 
ordinary. The strong afterglow in the west against which 
the big bird formed a dusky silhouette added no doubt to 
its impressiveness. 
After he has taken his perch our bird always behaves 
in precisely the same manner on different occasions. He 
sits "bollt upright, the long axis of his body parallel with, 
or rather forming a continuation of that of the stub against 
