68



S. Porter—A West Indian Diary



washing and gutting a few small fish on the seashore with four or

five vultures standing so close that I thought the birds would snatch

the tempting morsels out of her hands at any moment. As soon as

she was gone there was an immediate scramble for the bits of offal.


There must be a serious food shortage amongst these birds for I

am sure that the available amount of carrion and garbage cannot

possibly be adequate for the enormous number of vultures which

inhabit the island. In Jamaica an enormous amount of green coco-nuts

are used for their milk alone, the flesh and husk being thrown away

and I have often seen the birds picking out the flesh from the discarded

nuts by the roadsides. There has always been a great controversy

about the sense of smell in birds, but the natives of Jamaica aver that

this bird has a keen sense of smell and that it discovers most of its

food in that way. Whilst I was on the island there was a sensational

murder trial and the bodies of the two murdered people were stated to

have been found by the fact that that vultures were circling low over

the house. I was told that the birds will descend into pits or wells if

there is a dead animal lying at the bottom, though I cannot vouch

for the truth of this statement. The birds never seemed to look in

good condition, their plumage appearing worn and bedraggled. Some

birds had their flight feathers so battered that they had a difficulty

in taking off from the ground. I was told that a large colony of these

birds nested in a park in the centre of Kingston, but the place got so

unbearably offensive that the vultures were finally cleared out.


The Mountain Witch Ground Pigeon (Geotrygon versicolor).

Jamaica boasts of nine species of Pigeons, all of them very distinct

and of great beauty. Formerly they existed in vast numbers but

trapping, shooting, and the mongoose have greatly reduced their ranks

until none but the little Ground Dove can be called common, four

species are rare, and one, the subject of this chapter, practically extinct.

In this bird I was greatly interested and by an unusual stroke of good

luck I was able to secure several pairs. These birds had been kept

in captivity for several years and had been sent to America where,

owing to trouble with the Customs Authorities, it had been refused

admission into that country and had been sent back to Jamaica. Of

this bird, Gosse says in his Birds of Jamaica, “ No description can



