S. Porter—A West Indian Diary



77



very rare but promised to go that evening into the forests in the

interior and try and find out any one who had one of these birds for

sale. Knowing the ways of natives I certainly didn’t expect anything

to happen, especially as he had been working hard all day and would

certainly not feel like walking a great distance into the interior forests.

However, the next morning he appeared with a true pair of nestling

birds. They were wrapped up in a parcel of wire netting ! How they

managed to survive from being squashed to death I do not know.

However, they were in perfect condition and absolutely tame. The

native said that he had been into the forests, a distance of 17 miles

and obtained the birds from another native who had had them for

a fortnight. I should judge that they were from six to eight weeks old.


In both birds the plumage was a bright glossy green but not so

bright or rich as in the adult; the male had the ear-coverts washed

with brown, but the chief difference was the fact that the male had

the first four feathers in the primary coverts bright scarlet, whereas

in the female they were green. The male also had but one scarlet

feather on the forehead, while the female had many small scarlet and

yellow feathers intermixed with the green ones of the forehead. The

male also had the ends of the primary flight feathers, which are bright

blue, washed with pale pink and yellow. The bill of the cock was the

same colour as the adult, that is, a dark horn colour, but in the female

the bill was a yellowish colour, very much like that of the Yellow-bill.


The birds were a delightful couple, playing with one’s fingers and

also with one another. I put them in a cage with five of my baby

Yellow-bills and they soon made friends and started to preen each

others feathers. They took kindly to the syringe method of feeding

but the hen would go into paroxysms of rage if any of the other birds

were fed before she was. The bottom of the cage was covered with

sheets of newspaper cut to fit, which could be changed several times

a day. On the sight of the syringe the hen would wait to see if she

was going to be the first fed, if not, she would instantly go to the floor of

the cage and amidst cries of rage, proceed to tear the paper into shreds !


After about a week or so, both birds started to nibble at the heads

of sweet corn which I had fixed on to the front of the cage, after that

they started to eat the corn, and then canary seed and various fruits.



