R. H. Masure—The Birds of a Carribean Cruise



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and was told that the bird was tame and for sale. I reached out and

“ Lorita ” perched on my hand and walked on my shoulder, where

she stayed until early that evening when we reached our boat. She

was full-winged but so tame that she never made any attempt to fly

away either as we walked through the port or proceeded in our launch

to the large boat at the pier. This Parrot was the only available pet

animal in the village, and was purchased for a few dollars. Lorita,

which means little parrot in Spanish, is the name that is given to

most Parrots by the Central American natives.


Once again we entered our small launch to complete another part

of our circular journey and reach Puerto Barrios. We arrived in the

port about two o’clock in the afternoon when most of the citizens

were enjoying the afternoon siesta. Everywhere we went we found

the lady of the house asleep in her doorway making it impossible to

enter without awakening her. The men and the children were usually

inside the house and it is interesting to note that whenever business

was to be transacted the senora took care of all the bargaining. I was

very fortunate in finding an exceedingly tame and interesting Squirrel

Monkey in the possession of one of the homes visited. This very small

monkey was a real house pet and his owners were very reluctant to

part with him, although they finally agreed to sell him when I told

them that securing a monkey was one of the purposes of my long

journey. We added “ Chichi ” to our entourage and proceeded around

the town in cur quest for pets. We tracked down a series of parrot-like

squeaks and found a very tame Petz’s Conure which I finally purchased

for a dollar. Like the Parrot the little Conure was without a cage

and had to be carried on the hand. It was very tame and spoke Spanish.

We traced down many other Conures by using the one we had purchased

as an indicator ; the minute we heard a parrot “ squawk ” he would

answer. Unfortunately all of the other birds we located were of the

same species. Later on we found a very tame Black Howling Monkey,

but as they are quite large I did not purchase it. Our collecting ended

that afternoon with the finding of a Blue-wing Sugar-bird (Cyanerpes

cyanea), a Yellow Euphonia ( Tanagra crassirostris) , two Yellow-breasted

Finches or Siskins ( Chyrsomitris xanthogastra), and a Troupial ( Icterus

icterus). As the latter two species are South American forms they



