_Old Man._—_Rainbird._
_Piaya pluvialis._
_Cuculus pluvialis_, +Gm.+—Sloane. pl. 258.
_Piaya pluvialis_, +Lesson+.
[81] Length 19¹⁄₂ inches, expanse 19¹⁄₂, flexure 7¹⁄₂, tail
11³⁄₄, rictus 2, tarsus 1³⁄₄, middle toe 1¹⁄₂. Irides hazel;
feet bluish grey; beak black, gonys pale grey. Plumage extremely
loose and unwebbed. Head dark grey, merging on the neck into dark
greyish-green, which is the hue of the back, rump, and wings, with
metallic gloss. Tail feathers broad, graduated, glossy black,
tipped with white, broadly on the outmost. Throat and breast white,
the latter greyish; the remaining under parts deep red-brown.
Eyelids blackish. Interior of mouth black.
The appellation of Rainbird is indiscriminately applied to both this
and the preceding, as is, in a less degree, that of Old Man. I use
a term by which I have heard it distinguished, in St. Elizabeth’s,
perhaps derived from the perseverance with which it “hunts” (i. e.
searches) for its prey.
The manners of this fine bird greatly resemble those of its relative,
and its prey is also similar. It is a bird of large size and imposing
aspect, and its puffed plumage and long barred tail give it an
appearance of even greater magnitude than it possesses. Its voice is
sometimes a cackling repetition of one sound, increasing in rapidity
until the separate notes are undistinguishable. At other times it is a
hoarse croaking. The craw projects below the sternum, and the skin of
that part of the abdomen is destitute of feathers and even of down.
The obesity of this bird is often extraordinary; I have seen the fat
lying over the bowels, between the stomach and the vent, three-fourths
of an inch thick. When alive, it has a strong musky odour, like that of
the John-crow.
“In the changes of our mountain roads,” remarks Mr. Hill, “from deep
masses of shadowy forest, with prodigious trees overgrown with moss,
and climbing shrubs and lianes, to luxuriant and park-like pastures,
flowery hedgerows and shrubby thickets,—two sounds, remarkable and
different from each other, prevail. The one is the tapping of the
Woodpecker, broken in its measured monotony by an occasional scream;
and the other the rattle of the Rainbird, varied by a cry at intervals
like the caw of the Crow tribe. The deep forest is the haunt of the
Woodpecker,—the open thickets the resort of the Rainbird. The insects
which form the food of the one, are those that subsist out of the
sun-light, and perforate the alburnum of trees, or live beneath the
bark; those that are the prey of the other, are the tribes that find
their sustenance on the surface of vegetation, exist in the shade, and
only resort to the open air to shift from place to place.”