Part 46

This is one of the ducks which, being in high estimation for sapidity, are largely brought to market in the towns. My acquaintance with it is indeed confined to this condition. Robinson notices it, as frequently met with in the wet months. He saw one in the yard of Edward Long, Esq., of Spanish Town, where it fed amongst the poultry: “it was coloured like that painted in Mr. Catesby’s History of Carolina, i. p. 100, and was known to be a female by having laid an egg, though Mr. Catesby says the female is all over brown.” (MSS. ii. 120) Robinson agrees with Browne in considering this a permanent inhabitant of Jamaica, having known them shot, even during the dry season.

Of those which I examined, the stomachs contained coarse siliceous sand, and small black seeds; the œsophagus of one contained several small fishes.

PLAIN BLUEWING.

Cyanopterus inornatus.—+Mihi.+

Length 15³⁄₄ inches, expanse 24¹⁄₄, flexure 7, tail 2⁹⁄₁₀, breadth of beak ⁶⁄₁₀, height ¹³⁄₂₀, rictus 1⁹⁄₁₀, tarsus 1⁶⁄₁₀, middle toe 1³⁄₄.

Irides hazel; beak black; feet dusky clay colour; (in summer, yellow.) Crown and hind-head dark brown, speckled with pale dashes; sides of head paler brown, with black specks; throat and chin drab-white. Lower neck, back, and tail-coverts bistre, with horse-shoe lines of pale brown. Scapulars dark brown, with green gloss, a narrow border of pale brown. Wing-coverts pale blue; winglet, primaries, and primary coverts blackish, with pale inner webs; secondary greater-coverts white, with large spots of metallic green, which sometimes become disks. Secondaries, outer webs rich golden-green, edge of tips pale; tertials long, pointed, brown with pale shafts, slightly glossed. Tail feathers dark brown, with pale edges, and transverse spots on the outmost. Breast, belly, vent, and under tail-coverts silky drab, irregularly mottled and spotted with blackish; sides marked with horse-shoes of dark brown and pale. Inner surface of wings white.

The Teal which from the absence of the white crescent in both sexes, I have thus named, is well known in Jamaica, and has probably been mistaken for the female of discors, with which it associates. Its manners are said to be identical with those of its congener. It much resembles C. Fretensis of Eyton, but has not the broad yellow spot on the beak, nor the barred flanks.

The stomachs of such as I have dissected, contained small seeds, and coarse sand. One was brought me alive in March; its voice, when alarmed, was a very subdued hissing, like that of a goose, but very softly. I have met with this species only in Spanish Town.

The eastern point of Old Harbour is occupied by a salt-morass, immediately opposite Goat Island, which affords the principal supply of Ducks to the Spanish Town market; and more particularly since the construction of the railway has driven the birds from Passage Fort. The morass borders the little cove called Galleon Harbour, and extends over a small projecting peninsula, where it is cut into natural channels, intersecting each other at right angles, through which the sea flows, which are almost as regular as if cut by art. The surf, driven through them by the sea-breeze, and the frequent passage of boats, keep these singular canals open, and prevent the growth in them of the mangroves, which are perpetually throwing out their bow-like roots, and encroaching on every unoccupied space. It is at the open pans formed by the intersection of the canals, that the Ducks of various species congregate: when the gunners approaching in boats up the canals, come suddenly upon the flocks, and taking them in enfilade, bring down numbers at a shot.

SPINOUS SQUAT-DUCK.

Erismatura spinosa.

Anas spinosa, +Lath.+—Pl. enl. 967.

Length 13¹⁄₂ inches, expanse 19¹⁄₂, flexure 5¹⁄₁₀, tail 2¹⁄₂, breadth of beak at tip ¹³⁄₂₀, rictus 1¹⁄₂, tarsus 1³⁄₁₀, middle toe 2. Irides black; beak glaucous green, culmen blackish, under mandible colour of the nails; feet yellowish-grey, webs paler. Upper head deep bistre; neck minutely mottled with bistre and pale umber. Back, scapulars, and less wing-coverts bistre, each feather tipped and transversely banded with pale umber; feathers on rump velvety, minutely mottled with deep brown and whitish. Tail-coverts mottled with dark brown and bright bay. Tail of 18 feathers, very narrow, black, worn at tips, the shafts extending beyond the vanes. Wings smoke-black; first primary rudimentary; second and third sub-equal; the first five secondaries have the basal three-fourths of the outer webs pure white, and their greater coverts wholly white, forming a white patch in centre of wing. Sides of head marked by two bands of brown, one passing through the eye, the other from rictus to ear; over each of which is a parallel band of pale brown. Chin and throat pale bay, satiny; breast and belly pale buff, mottled obscurely with blackish. Tail-coverts both above and below, hardly differing from clothing-feathers. Inner surface of wings shining grey. Form broad and flattened.

In a broad piece of water near Radonda, which is crossed by the high road from Savanna le Mar to Negril, and which is connected with the vast morass that lies behind the former town, I have seen these curious little Ducks. Rarely more than three are visible at one time, scattered over the water, often very near the road. They pay very little attention to passing travellers; but if one stop and gaze at them, they take alarm, and sink the body lower into the water, until the back is level with the surface. If they suspect danger, they gradually sink wholly under water; and if suddenly alarmed they thus immerse themselves in a moment, not diving as other water birds do, but sinking as they sit, causing scarcely a ruffle of the surface. I have found them excessively wary, and difficult to shoot; because if they come up and still suspect danger, they immediately sink again, and remain beneath an incredible while, even for several hours, unless they can manage to expose the nostrils to the surface without appearing. When they do rise, it is in the same noiseless, almost imperceptible manner, and in the same posture as they went down. Occasionally they fly, or rather flutter with much flapping of wings, and apparently painful exertion, across the pond, splashing the surface as they go; and I have seen one take a higher flight across the road to the lower water. When undisturbed, they sit long in one place, and spend a good deal of time in smoothing their plumage.

The stomach of the specimen I obtained, a male, from which the description was taken, contained only seeds mostly comminuted.

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From a recent letter of Mr. Hill’s I extract the following notes. “We have certainly two if not three different Pond Ducks. With two I am familiarly acquainted. One is a very beautiful little bird, with such a prevalence of yellow and red ochre in the plumage, and with the usual crescent shaped ocellated markings of the Duck tribe, so dark, as to give it a very quail-like appearance. It has in consequence been commonly designated the Quail-duck. The secondaries of the wing are white; the head is dappled black and ochry-white, and the bill is a brilliant cobalt-blue. The tail is stiff and curved upwards, with (I think) 16 black feathers which radiate broad and distinct, without any lapping of one feather over another. In the nestling bird the feathers are differently formed. They are unwebbed in the centre of the shaft, the terminal plumes being few, and curved like the Υ of the Greek alphabet.

Hence my friend proposes to name it Erismatura ortygoides.

“The other is a short squat Duck, almost square in form, the breadth of its body being equal to its length, and uniformly coloured wood-brown;—a description of the plumage not perhaps very precise, but so much so with respect to the ordinary hue of the bark of trees, as to make it sufficiently indicative of the prevailing colour. The centre shafts of the tail of this bird terminate in long stiff spines, as stiff and as long as those of a horse-comb.

“I shall not venture to say how far similarity of structure in the tail of the Erismaturine family of Ducks with that of the Cormorant, indicates a similarity in the application of this organ for diving purposes, as Mr. Eyton has conjectured; but a bird kept in a small pool in a flower garden, into which pond-weeds were daily thrown, particularly chara and duck-weed, (pistiaceæ) upon which it was supposed to feed, would lead me to think that one important purpose that this remarkably constructed organ was applied to, was to move aside the dense vegetation of shallow pools in which it fed. The habit of this bird was to turn round quick. By this motion it opened out the weeds on the surface, so graphically described by Shakspeare as ‘the green mantle of the standing pool,’—and made a clear space for ‘swithering with its neb,’ as Lincolnshire decoy-keepers would say. It dived frequently, and the period it remained submerged was prodigiously long. It swam backward as frequently as forward, and, I apprehend, found its peculiarly made tail a powerful lever in dilating the space behind it. The little garden, in which the bird was kept, that furnished me with these observations, was a fair representation of its natural haunts. Tufts of flowers, composed of lilies, kincalmias, and Indian-shot, with intermixtures of young vegetating bananas, were an apt substitute for the heliconias, nymphæas, cyperaceæ, juncales, and marantaceous plants, among which it delighted when wild and at large. It sometimes crept on the bank, and sheltered itself among the bowery herbage; but the clots of damp weed, strewn around its pond, were its favourite resting place when out of the water; and there it sat crouching, not sitting upright as the Grebe does. In its natural haunts it is occasionally flushed, but its flight is exceedingly short, not usually more than from the bank into the mantling herbage of the pond, where it instantly disappears in those long submersions I have already noticed.”

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The remaining Anatidæ which have been observed in Jamaica, I shall dismiss with a bare enumeration, furnished by my esteemed friend to whom this work is so deeply indebted. Though some of them have fallen under my own notice, I have nothing to add to their known history. I treat them in this summary manner, the more willingly, because my friend is himself preparing for the press a treatise on the migratory birds of Jamaica, the fruit of many years’ close observation.

Chen hyperboreus, Snow Goose. Anser Canadensis, Canada Goose. Dafila acuta, Pintail. Pœcilonetta Bahamensis, Ilathera Duck. Mareca Americana, Wigeon. Aix sponsa, Summer Duck. Querquedula Carolinensis, Greenwing Teal. Rhynchaspis clypeata, Shoveler. Chaulelasmus streperus, Gadwall. Anas obscura, Dusky Duck. ” boschas, Mallard. Cairina moschata, Muscovy Duck. Oidemia perspicillata, Surf Duck (Dr. Chamb.). Fuligula Americana, Pochard. ” affinis, Scaup Duck. ” rufitorques, Tufted Duck. Nyroca leucophthalma, White-eyed Duck.

+Fam.+—PELECANIDÆ. (The Pelicans.)

RUFOUS-NECKED PELICAN.

Pelecanus fuscus.—+LINN.+

Aud. pl. 251.

Length 47 inches, expanse 79¹⁄₂, flexure 18¹⁄₂, tail 5, rictus 12¹⁄₂, tarsus 3¹⁄₄, middle toe 4¹⁄₄.