Part 44

Length 15¹⁄₂ inches, expanse 27¹⁄₄, flexure 7³⁄₄, tail 2¹⁄₁₀, rictus 1⁴⁄₁₀, height of shield from base of lower mandible 1, tarsus 2¹⁄₂, middle toe 3⁴⁄₁₀, width of middle membrane ⁹⁄₁₀.

In the immense morass behind Savanna le Mar, the dense rushes afford shelter to innumerable aquatic birds, among which one may recognise, even at a distance, the Sultanas by their graceful air and slender form, the Gallinules by their scarlet shields, and the Coots by their conspicuous ivory beaks. In the broad spaces of open water, which here and there margin the reeds, as at Radonda, they may be seen at all hours of the day, if undisturbed, hundreds congregated within an acre. Wary, however, to an excess, the distant sight of a man, or the snapping of the twigs beneath his tread, alarms the whole, and away they flutter into the covert, splashing the surface as they go. Yet the noise made by the cattle walking on the shore, or trampling and munching the reeds, as they wade breast-high, has no such effect. The best way to shoot them is to lie very quiet, if the musquitoes will allow you, behind a bush, and take them as they come out, sometimes two or three at a shot; or else to wade in among the reeds, and bring them down as they rise; though sometimes you cannot flush them. A good water dog is indispensable to success.

As far as my observation goes, the white shield is the mark of mature age: in the young it is dark brown; I have not seen any with the shield wholly white, the upper part still being brown. After having been carried head downward for some time, I found the beak of one, instead of white, livid purple, as if filled with blood. The stomachs usually contain small seeds, and decaying vegetable matter mixed with mud and sand.

+Fam.+—RECURVIROSTRADÆ. (The Avocets.)

ROSEATE STILT.

Himantopus nigricollis.

Recurvirostra himantopus, +Wils.+—Aud. pl. 328. Himantopus nigricollis, +Vieill.+

Length 14 inches, expanse 26³⁄₄, flexure 8¹⁄₂, tail 2⁹⁄₁₀, rictus 2⁷⁄₁₀, naked tibia 3, tarsus 4¹⁄₂, middle toe 1⁷⁄₁₀. Intestine 12 inches, two cæca attached by a mesentery, 1 inch long, 1¹⁄₂ inch from cloaca.

This beautiful and singular bird first fell under my observation in December. It was wading in the water of Crab-pond, picking from the mud at the bottom, with the beak, the water reaching not quite half-way up the tarsus. It did not feel with the beak in the manner of the Snipe, but struck at the prey that caught its eye, as it walked with the head erect. The statement of Cuvier that walking is painful to this bird, is as contrary to fact as to reason. This specimen was walking in the shallow firmly enough; and even when shot in one leg so as to break it, it stood for some time on the other in a firm erect attitude, the broken limb being held up and dangling.

Three were shot at Bluefields Creek on the 1st of May, in the evening, out of a large flock that were wading on the little bar at the mouth,—and were brought to me. One which had the wing broken was alive, and otherwise unhurt. It ran actively enough, without the slightest vacillation, taking long strides; but when it was on its belly, it could not get on its legs without help, sprawling about with opened wings: it is quite likely, however, that this was owing to one wing being rendered useless, for in attempting to rise, I perceived, it always tried to balance itself by opening and extending horizontally the wings. Probably this is the compensation given to it by the Allwise Creator, for the want of purchase which must be felt in raising the body at the end of levers, so long and so slender as the legs. It frequently stopped abruptly, essayed to go on, and stopped again, in that hesitating manner common to the Plovers; and like them it often jerked the head up and down. Its usual attitude, when standing still, was with the neck shortened, so that the head projected from between the shoulders, the beak pointing obliquely downwards, and the hinder parts of the body a little elevated. Now and then it lifted one foot, and held it dangling behind the other for a few seconds. Once or twice I saw it pick at the floor, and probably it took a small insect. Its cry, which was uttered once or twice, was a short clank, loud, harsh, and abrupt. I cannot by any means agree with Wilson, that this bird manifests no resemblance to the Plovers.

The stomachs of these contained a few small shells, Turbo and Nerita: two which Robinson dissected contained “a kind of Cornu-ammonis,” probably Planorbis. He notices also, what I have not seen mentioned in print, but which was conspicuous enough in my specimen, a beautiful rosy blush on the white of the neck and breast; but only in the male. The females had eggs in the ovary at this time, (1st May) as large as pigeon-shot. They were all very fat, the fat being of a deep yellow hue.

Mr. Hill has favoured me with the following notes on this species: “In addition to the extraordinary length of leg of the Himantopus, it has been asserted that its leg-bones are as limber as a leathern thong, and that they can be bent up without being broken. The accurate Wilson has made this statement. I will not merely say that it is at variance with my experience, but that it is absolutely absurd. The bones of this bird are as rigid as those of any other. [To this I add also my own testimony.] The only peculiarity I observe in them, is a flatness in the make of the leg. While the measurement is a fourth of an inch one way, it is scarcely an eighth of an inch the other. The tendon that runs all along the limb is very large, and the skin that envelopes the whole leg very fleshy. A fleshy feeling of softness is the only approach to the leathery peculiarity so confidently spoken of. The bill has a trifling trace, almost imperceptible, of recurvature. It is very rigid. Out of sixteen or eighteen birds carefully examined, I saw only one with a very decidedly marked recurved character. There was another circumstance I observed, very worthy of notice; viz. that the length of the legs of no two birds was precisely the same. Nearly half an inch of difference was found between the tibia and tarsus of the longest, and of the shortest specimens. [My own observation fully bears out this statement.]

“The birds brought me were shot while feeding in some shallow pools of water in the Salines at Passage Fort. They were wading deeply. They fed in small flocks, and winged about sportively, mingled with Sandpipers of the Tringa cinerea species. A variety of Teal were there also; and the Shoveler Duck (Rhynchaspis clypeata), a peculiar insect-feeder, being among them at the same time, makes us pretty distinctly acquainted with the food of Himantopus.

“In March 1842, I noticed several Stilt Plovers fishing breast-high in a lakelet at the mouth of the Rio Cobre, which I used to look upon from the window of the dwelling I stayed at, at Passage Fort. I saw some eight or ten together, when a Kingfisher was fishing at one end of the pond, and an Osprey at the other; the Kingfisher confining himself to the tranquil stream, and the Osprey to the broken waters, where the current of the river contended with the shoaling sea. I saw the Stilts there an hour together, beating breast-high over the pond. It was evident that their food floated on the surface.”

* * * * *

My friend adds Recurvirostra Americana, as an occasional visitant of Jamaica.

+Order.+—ANSERES. (Swimmers.)

+Fam.+—ANATIDÆ. (The Ducks.)

RED FLAMINGO.

Phœnicopterus ruber. +Linn.+

Aud. pl. 416.

“Length from beak to toes extended 62 inches, expanse 57¹⁄₂, tail 5¹⁄₂, beak 5¹⁄₂, neck 23, leg [tarsus] 11, middle toe 3, hind toe ¹⁄₂.”—(Rob. MSS.)

The dimensions given below are from a specimen shot on the beach at Negril, in March 1764; from the Doctor’s description, it seems to have been scarcely mature. He adds, “I once saw a living one at Kingston. Its food was white bread steeped in water in a washing basin. In feeding, it immerged its upper mandible in the bottom of the basin, resting on the elbow or angle of that mandible, and by quick repeated motions, like those of a duck in the mud, sucked up the finest parts of the dissolving bread.”

As I have never met with this beautiful bird in Jamaica, I am the more obliged for the following memoir from the pen of my kind friend, Mr. Hill. “I believe the Flamingo is never seen now upon our coasts, but as a solitary bird, or, at most, associated with three or four companions, when they make excursions in small groups, preparatory to pairing and breeding. The congregated flocks of the neighbouring islands disperse themselves; and stragglers appear upon the sand-bars at the mouths of our rivers, occasionally, in seasons remarkable for visits of the Hyperborean and the Canada Goose. We are best acquainted with them as inhabitants of Cuba. The waters between the thinly peopled shores of that island, and the clustered green kays of the coast, to which Columbus gave the names of the Gardens of the King and Queen, are low and shoaly. In these shallow seas, in adjacent swamps, in river-lakes, in marshes and lagoons, and salina-ponds, they are to be always seen moving in flocks, or flying and feeding in ranks of two and three hundred together. Their lengthened lines and red plumage have led the colonial Spaniards to call them English soldiers, a name not inappropriate to birds that marshal themselves under a leader, and regulate their movements by signals, when the remotest danger threatens; and obey the bugle-blast of their sentinel, when he summons the cohorts to the wing, and to betake themselves to other feeding-grounds.

“I visited the district of Boyamo on the south side of Cuba in the year 1821, and was on the coast from January to April. I was much among the marshes and swamps about the river Conta, a stream that receives the tidal waters, which here rise and fall six or seven feet, at fifty miles along its course. At the mouth of this river there are long stretches of shoal ground, where the floods of the river and the sea form lakelets, and successively deposit their stores of living atoms, with the rising and falling tides. Here the Flamingoes flock and feed. They arrange themselves in what seem to be lines, in consequence of their finding their food along the edges of these shallows; and though it is true that whilst their heads are down, and they are cluttering with their bills in the water, they have one of their number on the watch, standing erect, with his long neck turning round to every point, ready to sound the alarm on the apprehension of danger,—what appears to be a studied distribution of themselves back to back, as some observers describe their arrangement, is nothing but their regardless turning about in their places, inwardly and outwardly, at a time when all are intent on making the most of the stores which the prolific waters are yielding.

“The vessel I was with on the coast of Cuba was loading timber. Our raftsmen brought us from Juanita, a town on the Rio Conta to which the tidal influences of the sea extend, a pair of Flamingoes. I was struck with their attitudes, with the excellent adaptation of their two-fold character of waders and swimmers, to their habits, while standing and feeding in the sort of shoal which we made them in a large tub upon deck. We were here able to observe their natural gait and action. With a firm erectness, like a man treading a wine press, they trod and stirred the mashed biscuits, and junked fish, with which we fed them; and plied their long lithe necks, scooping with their heads reversed, and bent inwardly towards their trampling feet. The bill being crooked, and flattened for accommodation to this reversed mode of feeding, when the head is thrust down into the mud-shoals and the sand drifts, the upper bill alone touches the ground. The structure of the tongue, of which Professor Owen has given so minute and interesting a description, is admirably adapted for a mode of feeding altogether peculiar. The spines with which the upper surface is armed, are arranged in an irregular and alternate series, and act with the notches on the edge of the upper mandible, on which they press when the bird feeds with the head reversed. In this reversed position, the weight and size of the tongue becomes a very efficient instrument for entrapping the food. The bird muddles, and clatters the bill, and dabbles about, and the tongue receives and holds as a strainer whatever the water offers of food.

“When I made my notes of the Flamingo, thought I had remarked what had hitherto been unobserved, respecting the ceaseless trampling of the feet while feeding; but I find Catesby has described it.... A correspondent of Buffon’s also, I perceive, communicated the same fact, with other incidents equally striking....

“There is nothing of the Heron character in the Flamingo. Extraordinary length of neck and legs is common to both, but a firm erect posture is its ordinary standing attitude. The neck is never curved inward and outward, convex and concave, like a Crane’s, but its movements are in long sweeping curves, which are peculiarly pleasing, when the bird is preening its plumage.