142 
Mr. P. It. Lowe on the 
his yacht the f Valhalla/ and Mr. M. J. Nicoll, who accom¬ 
panied him, made a collection of birds which he described in 
f The Ibis ’ of the same year. Among these birds were 
specimens of two new species, which Mr. Nicoll described 
as Pitangus caymanensis and Dendroica crawfordi. 
An examination of the list of birds given below reveals 
the fact that the avifauna of the Cayman Islands, as at 
present known to us, comprises some 75 species. This small 
total is almost certainly due to two reasons—first, that the 
collectors who have visited the islands since 1886 have 
naturally confined their work chiefly to the land-birds; 
secondly, that there appear to have been no local naturalists 
sufficiently interested to make records of the migratory 
and casual birds which visit the islands. Of the 75 species 
already recorded, about 40 would appear to be resident; the 
remainder being made up of winter visitors, of birds which 
pass through on migration in the autumn or spring, and of 
casual stragglers. 
Of the 40 resident birds, 20 are peculiar to one or other 
of the Caymans, or to all three, and do not occur elsewhere. 
But with regard to this division we are bound to state that 
in the case of one or two, or even more, we have experienced 
the greatest difficulty in appreciating the distinctions on 
which they have been considered to rank as new species or 
subspecies. The remaining 20 resident birds comprise those 
which have a more or less wide range outside the islands. 
Of these Dendrceca vitellina is found nowhere else but in Swan 
Island, while in the case of Amazona leucocephala , Myiarchus 
sagrce , and Holoquiscalus gundlachi , the only other known 
locality in which they are found is Cuba. 
The Ground-Dove, again, is only found elsewhere in 
Jamaica. 
The following is a list of those species and subspecies 
which have been considered to be absolutely peculiar to the 
Cayman Islands : — 
