_Euphonia Jamaica._
_Fringilla Jamaica_, +Linn.+
_Euphonia Jamaica_, +Desm.+
_Grey Grosbeak_, +Brown+.—Ill. Zool. pl. 26.
[66] Length 4¹⁄₂ inches, expanse 8, flexure 2⁶⁄₁₀, tail 1⁵⁄₁₀,
rictus ⁵⁄₁₀, tarsus ³⁄₄, middle toe ¹¹⁄₂₀. Irides deep hazel: feet
dark grey; beak grey, the fissure, ridge and tip black.
Male. Upper parts slate blue, glossy, more or less tinged on the
rump with green. Throat, breast, and sides pale grey: belly yellow;
under tail coverts greyish white. The blue on the wing-quills
nearly black.
Female. Loins, upper tail-coverts, and thighs, yellow-green; no
yellow on the belly. Otherwise as the male.
A short stumpy bird, and rather inelegant from the shortness of
its tail, the Blue Quit reminds me of the Nut-hatches. It is very
common about homesteads, where it frequents fruit-trees, particularly
the sops: it is, however, nowise infrequent in the woods, both on
the mountains and in the lowlands. It hops busily about the twigs
and fruits, picking in any position, back or belly, head or tail,
uppermost. When the sour-sop is ripe, they flock to it in such numbers,
that the tree appears covered with them: the negro children then set
limed twigs for them, and I have had them brought to me thus as fast
as they could be taken down. The boys cut diagonal notches into the
bark of a naseberry tree, (_Achras_), or score an unripe fruit; a white
milk exudes, so abundant as to drop quickly, and is caught on a leaf.
At first it has the consistence of thin cream, but half an hour’s
exposure thickens it, and gives it tenacity enough to be drawn into
threads; when they consider it “ripe.” A twig smeared with this “gum,”
is stuck into the half-eaten sour-sop or custard-apple, presenting a
very inviting perch to the hungry birds. One soon hops on the fatal
twig, and is in an instant fluttering helplessly, fast at the feet.
Banana birds, Mocking birds, and Cashew birds are also taken in this
way. The appearance of the intestinal viscera at such a season, is very
singular, being distended with the white pulp throughout their length,
perfectly visible from the transparency of the intestines. At first
the stomach seems to be wanting, and this much surprised me; but the
fact is, that organ is simply a thin membranous sac, or rather canal,
differing in no apparent respect from the intestine, save in slightly
increased capacity.
The musical powers of our little Blue Quit are considerable: it is
a sweet and constant song-bird. It has various notes; frequently it
chirps pertinaciously, like the Humming birds; at other times it utters
a long “twee,” like the Chicken-Hawk; sometimes it delights in a soft
warbling repetition of a single note; sometimes its voice is closely
like the plaintive mewing of a kitten. But besides these it has a
real song, sweet and musical. In March at Spanish Town, I heard two,
apparently both males, warbling close together on a genip-tree opposite
my window, very sweetly but hurriedly. When one flew to another twig
the other presently followed. By and bye they ceased that melody, and
one took to a strain consisting of about a dozen rapid repetitions
of the same note, ending with one elevated note, with a jerking
abruptness. This strain he repeated several times.
About the middle of April, a pair of Blue Quits built a nest on one of
the topmost branches of a high fiddle wood in the yard of Bluefields
house. The tree was much infested with that parasite called Old man’s
beard, large bunches of which grew on most of the limbs and boughs, so
numerously as to touch each other in long successions. Two of these
contiguous bunches the birds had managed to separate, either by picking
away portions, or by pushing them apart, so as to open a large hollow,
and in this they built a very snug domed nest. It was globular in
form, about as large as an infant’s head, with an opening in one side,
composed of dry grass, the dried stems of the _Tillandsia_, tendrils
of passion-flower, bits of rag, profusely intermixed with cotton and
the down of plants; yet these soft substances were not used to line
the structure, the grass only appearing in the inside. Perhaps it was
not finished, for the birds were passing in and out, and thus betrayed
its existence, for so identified was it in appearance with the bunches
around, that but for this ingress and egress, and the little opening,
I could not have detected it. I sent up a lad to examine it, but in so
doing, he partially broke the branch, causing it to hang down; and this
I presume awakened suspicion, for the birds deserted it, and in a few
days I had it taken down. It was empty.
Mr. Hill has favoured me with the following interesting memorandum.
“Feb. 5. 1838. Near the piazza of my house a cotton-bush has flung out
its knots of white filaments. Hither come the birds at this season
to gather materials for constructing their nests. The Blue Sparrow,
a pretty little frugivorous bird that sings in our fruit trees, all
the year round, its merry twittering song, has been busily engaged
with his mate collecting bills-full of cotton. It did not seem to be a
thing immediately settled that they should set to work and gather their
materials at once. They had alighted on the tree as if they had very
unexpectedly found what they were seeking. The male began to twitter a
song of joy, dancing and jumping about, and the female, intermingling
every now and then a chirp, frisked from stem to stem, and did very
little more than survey the riches of the tree: at least she plucked
now and then a bill-full of the filaments, and spreading it to flaunt
to the wind tossed it away, as if she had been merely shewing that it
every way answered the purpose in length and softness, and was in every
respect the thing they wanted. At each of these displays of the kind
and quality of the materials, the male intermingled his twittering song
with a hoarse succession of notes, which were always the same, _chu,
chu, chu, chu, chwit_; to which the female chirped two or three times
in succession; then grasping another bill-full of cotton, tossed it
away as before, and obtained from the male the same notes of attention
and approval. At last they set to work in earnest, gathered a load of
the materials drawn out as loosely as they could get it, and filling
their bills, started away to the tree, wherever it was, in which they
had determined to build their nest.”