_Spermophila olivacea._
_Emberiza olivacea_, +Linn.+
_Fringilla lepida_, Ibid.
_Passerina olivacea_, +Vieill.+
_Spermophila olivacea_, +Sw.+
[70] Length 4¹⁄₈ inches, expanse 6³⁄₄, flexure 2, tail 1⁷⁄₁₀,
rictus ⁷⁄₂₀, tarsus ⁷⁄₁₀, middle toe ⁶⁄₁₀. Irides dark hazel; feet
purplish; beak horny black.
Male. Upper parts olive; a stripe over the eye, a minute one under
the eye, and the chin and throat, rich yellow, narrowly edged with
black; lower throat and breast black, merging into the olive;
belly very pale olive; vent and under tail coverts almost white.
Wing-quills blackish, edged with olive; edge of shoulder yellow.
Tail olive.
In the female the black is absent, and the yellow is less
conspicuous.
Immediately behind the homestead of Bluefields, a lane, confined
for a mile or two between dry-stone walls, leads to the road which
winds in a zig-zag line to the top of the Bluefields ridge. This lane
possesses many attractions. By the wall on each side grow trees, which
afford grateful shade, and many of them load the evening air with dewy
fragrance. Orange-trees, profusely planted, give out in spring gushes
of odour from their waxen blossoms, and in autumn tempt the eye with
their “golden fruitage.” The Pride of China, lovely in its graceful
leaves and spikes of lilac blossoms, and not less sweet-scented than
the orange; the pimento, dense and glossy, with another, but not
inferior, character of beauty; are varied by the less showy, but still
valuable, cedar and guazuma. The various species of _echites_ trail
their slender stems and open their brilliant flowers, along the top
of the wall, and the pretty _Banisteria_ displays its singular yellow
blossoms, or scarlet berries at its foot; while near the top of the
lane, tangled and matted masses of the _night-blowing cereus_ depend
from the trees, or sprawl over the walls, expanding their magnificent,
sun-like flowers, only to “the noon of night.” Here and there huge
black nests of _termites_ look like barrels built into the wall, whose
loose stones, grey with exposure, and discoloured with many-tinted
lichens, afford a sombre relief to the numerous large-leafed _arums_
that climb and cluster above them. To the left the mountain towers,
dark and frowning; the view on the right is bounded by a row of little
rounded hills, studded with trees and clumps of pimento. But between
the traveller and either, extend the fields of guinea-grass, which
are enclosed by these boundary walls. In the autumn, when the grass
is grown tall, and the panicles of seed waving in the wind give it a
hoary surface, the little Grass-quits, both of this and the following
species, throng hither in numerous flocks, and perching in rows on
the slender stalks, weigh them down, while they rifle them of the
farinaceous seeds.
In March, I have found the stomach of the Yellow-face full of seeds of
the common pasture grasses; and I have been struck with the enormous
dilatation of the membranous craw, which, as in the Gallinaceæ,
occupies the hollow of the _furcula_.
D’Orbigny, who has given a good figure of it, in Sagra’s Cuba, alludes
to its prevalence in all the great Antilles. At the Havanna, he says it
is frequently caged, being very docile, and readily learning to sing. I
have never heard from it any other note than a quivering chirrup as it
flits from bush to bush.
Mr. Hill has favoured me with the following note. “Nests of the
Grass-bird are frequently brought to me, but without distinguishing
between the yellow and the black-throated species. A nest in the
garden, built in a _Nerium oleander_, by the latter, [in July,] enables
me to set down a remark or two. I see no difference in the structure
of the nests of the two species. They are both domed nests, made of
pliable dry grass, and lined with horse-hair. This nest is built
between the forks of the long vertical stems of the _oleander_, or
South Sea rose. Three other vertical stems press it close, and the
leaves quite canopy it over. The substratum of the nest, on which it
may be said to be bedded, is a mass of long linen rags, wound in and
round the forked branch. It is quite true that the Grass-bird very
frequently selects a shrub, on which the wasps have built, fixing the
entrance close to their cells. I saw a nest in this secure situation a
few years ago; it was pointed out to me as illustrating a habit of the
yellow-throated species.
“The Grass-birds remind me much of the European Sparrow. They are very
social, have a strong predilection for the house-garden, and when
feeding by half-dozens and dozens together, are very noisy. They have a
peculiar shrill chirp; and in the season when the grasses are in seed,
their diminutive bodies, for they are smaller than wrens, may be seen
weighing down the culm of the grass, everywhere about.
“On one occasion, some twenty or thirty of the Yellow-throated
Grass-bird constructed a mass of nests, within the wide crutch of a
baobab tree, and lived in common.”