_Twopenny Chick._
_Merula leucogenys._
_Turdus leucogenys_, +Gmel.+
_Merula solicitor_, +Hill+.
[28] Length 9¹⁄₂ inches, expanse 14¹⁄₂, flexure 5, tail 3³⁄₄,
rictus 1¹⁄₄, tarsus 1¹⁄₂, middle toe 1¹⁄₁₀. Irides doll orange;
beak bright orange, blackish at tip; feet deep fulvous. Whole
upper parts greyish-black; crown and tail deep black; wing-quills
brownish-black; the innermost two of the greater coverts have the
edge of the outer web pure white. Under parts ashy-grey, silky;
darkest on throat; chin _usually_ white; medial line of belly
white: under tail-coverts black, tipped with white. Sexes exactly
alike.
The birds on which the peasantry in any country have conferred homely
abbreviations of human names, are, I think, only such as have something
lively and entertaining in their manners. Examples of familiar birds
will at once occur to an English reader, and the subject of the
present note is by no means an exception to the rule. He is one of the
liveliest of our Jamaican birds: in woody places his clear whistle
perpetually strikes the ear of the passenger, as he sits among the
close foliage, or darts across the glade. Not unfrequently we are
startled by a shrill scream in some lonely place, and out rushes the
Hopping Dick, jumping with rapidity across the road, almost close to
our horse’s feet. He greatly reminds me of the English Blackbird, in
his sable plumage, and bright yellow beak, but especially when hopping
along the branches of some pimento tree, or upon the sward beneath, in
those beautiful park-like estates called _pens_. The keen glancing of
his eye, his quick turns and odd gesticulations, the elevation of his
long tail almost erect, his nods and jerks, have in them an uncommon
vivacity, which is not belied by his loud voice, as he repeats a high
mellow note four or five times in rapid succession, just preparatory
to, or during, his sudden flights from tree to tree. His notes are
various: sometimes we hear him in the lone wood, uttering, _click,
click, click_, without variation of tone or intermission, for many
minutes together. His _song_ which I have heard only in spring, is rich
and mellow, much like the English Blackbird’s: he sits in some thick
tree, or wood, particularly at earliest dawn, and pours forth his clear
notes in a broken strain, and often in a subdued tone, as if singing
only to please himself.
I happened to wound slightly two of these birds on the same day, which
I placed in a cage. They were free and easy from the first, very
clamorous, lively and even headlong in their sudden movements. I found
that they would seize and devour with eagerness cockroaches, hard
beetles, worms, and even small lizards. I gave them a bunch of the
ripe, but dry and insipid, berries of a species of _ficus_, which they
readily picked off and ate. The fruit of this fig they are fond of in
a state of freedom; and such is their impudence that they prevent the
Baldpate Pigeons, though so much bigger, from partaking. The Baldpates
would willingly eat the little figs also, but the Hopping Dicks scream
and fly at them, and peck their backs, so as to keep them fluttering
from branch to branch, reluctant to depart, yet unable to eat in
comfort.
At the break of day, if we pass along a wooded mountain road, such as
that lonely one at Basin-spring, in Westmoreland, particularly when the
parching winds called _norths_ have set in, in December and January,—we
see the Hopping Dicks bounding singly along the ground in every part;
but during the day they resort in numbers to the diminished springs and
ponds which yet remain, where, after quenching their thirst, they enjoy
the luxury of a bathe.
In the high mountains behind Spanish Town, this bird is called the
Twopenny chick; but in the parishes of Westmoreland and St. Elizabeth,
I have heard him distinguished only by the homely appellation which
I have adopted. He is not confined to any particular locality. Dr.
Chamberlaine (_Jam. Alm._) has “never seen him in the lowlands.” But
around Bluefields he is abundant, especially in the little belt of wood
that girds the sandy sea-beach at Belmont, where one may meet with him
at all times. In the pastures of Mount Edgecumbe he is no less common.
In the highest districts, as Bluefields Peaks, though I have sometimes
seen him, he is chiefly represented by his congener, the Glass-eye:
in the solitudes of Basin-spring, a lower elevation, both species are
numerous.
In some “Contributions to Ornithology,” by Dr. Richard Chamberlaine,
published in the Companion to the Jamaica Almanack for 1842, this
bird is described. The following observations are there quoted from
a letter of Mr. Hill’s to the Doctor:—“I paid a visit the other day
to the Highgate mountains, a district in which our native Ouzel, the
Hopping Dick, is exceedingly abundant. On asking one morning the name
of the bird, whose clear, mellow-toned whistle I was then listening to,
a negro told me it was the _Hopping Dick_, and that they ‘always hear
him when the long days begin.’ The long days had not yet begun; but at
early dawn, while the distant horizon was seen but faintly gleaming
through the dull grey break of daylight, and many of these Merles were
gliding from one thicket to another, and dashing across the road with
that bounding run from which they derive their sobriquet of Hopping
Dick, one bird anticipated the season of song, by repeatedly sounding
two or three cadences of that full deep whistle with which he salutes
the lengthening year.
“The forests skirting the mountain are his favourite haunt. If he
frequents the open slopes and crests of the hills, he glides from tree
to tree, just above the surface of the grass. If he rises above the
lower branches of the pimento, or into some of the loftier shrubs, it
is to visit the _Tillandsias_, or parasitical wild-pines, to drink
from within the heart-leaves at those reservoirs of collected dews
which are the only resource of the birds in these high mountains. His
dark sooty plumage, his brilliant orange bill, and his habit, when
surprised or disturbed, of escaping by running or flying low, and
sounding all the while his alarm scream till he gets away into the
thicket, completely identify him with the European Blackbird.
“It was in the month of July, in 1834, that I first heard the song
of this Ouzel, which I would call _Merula Saltator_, as this name
preserves his distinctive sobriquet of Hopping Dick, and refers to
his characteristic length of legs, both at the tarsus and the thighs.
The shock of an earthquake had wakened all the living tenants of
the plantation at which I was staying, when the voice of this bird,
as the alarm lulled into silence, was heard from a small coppice of
cedar-trees, clear and mellow. Though it was less varied than the song
of the European Blackbird, it was very much like its tones when it is
heard over distant fields in a summer’s morning. I had been apprised
that I should hear it there, for it had sung in that grove daily at
that season for three or four years; and though under the disadvantage
of being an anticipated song, it was a very agreeable recognition of
the melody of the European bird.
“The next time I heard his music was in the month of May, 1836, in the
same mountains. The rains of the season had terminated, or only mid-day
showers fell, the mornings and evenings being refreshing and brilliant
It was now not a single one of these birds that I heard singing lonely
in a sequestered cluster of trees, but a hundred of them far and near,
blending their voices together, or vying with each other in rivalry of
song. My frequent weekly journeys in these districts, from this period
to the end of August, were always cheered by this simultaneous outburst
of melody from the _Merula saltator_.”
I found a nest of this bird one day in the middle of August; it was
affixed to the highest perpendicular limb of a rather tall pimento in
Mount Edgecumbe, and consisted of a rude cup formed of the slender
roots of pimento, and placed on a platform of leaves and small twigs.
It contained two young, almost fledged, which flew to the ground before
they could be seized,—and one abortive egg. The young displayed the
plumage of the adult, even to the white webs on the two coverts; but
the eyes were dark greyish-brown, the beak blackish, and the feet,
dull, horny yellow. The egg measures 1⁴⁄₁₀ inch: by ⁹⁄₁₀: it is white,
thickly splashed with dark and pale reddish-brown. Sometimes, as I have
been informed, a decaying stump is selected, or any other convenient
hollow, into which the bird carries “plantain trash,” or similar
materials, and forms a rude nest, laying three or four eggs. And Mr.
Hill gives me a statement of a locality which is intermediate between
these; observing, “A friend of mine found the nest of a Hopping Dick.
It was built amid the dry leaves that had lodged within the forks of a
low branch of a mango-tree. It was a structure of small sticks, loosely
woven, in the centre of which the young birds nestled among dried
foliage.”