_Aramus scolopaceus._
_Ardea scolopacea_, +Gmel.+—Aud. pl. 377.
_Rallus ardeoïdes_, +Spix+.
_Rallus gigas_, +Bonap.+
_Aramus scolopaceus_, +Vieill.+
[111] Length 25 inches, expanse 39¹⁄₂, flexure 13, tail 5, rictus
3⁹⁄₁₀, bare part of tibia 2, tarsus 4³⁄₁₀, middle-toe 3³⁄₁₀.
Irides hazel; feet dull grey, front of tarsi and toes blackish,
polished; beak grey, blackish at tip, tinged with flesh-colour at
base; tongue ending in a long horny point; no naked skin on head.
General plumage brown, each feather marked through the centre with
a pointed pencil of pure white. On the crown the hue is dusky, the
centres being merely paler; on the neck the centres are large, and
give the prevailing hue; it is on the fore-back and wing-coverts
that the centres assume their beautiful form and distinctness.
The quills, greater coverts, loins, rump, and tail, are destitute
of white centres. On the inner wing-coverts, the breast, belly,
and thighs, the brown is dull, and the centres large and well
marked; the edges of the feathers loosely webbed. On the cheeks,
the markings pale and indistinct; chin impure white. The brown of
the back, wings, and tail is of an exceedingly rich deep hue, very
silky, and displaying an iridescent glow of purple, like that of
shaded silk. Wings short, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth quills,
equal. First quill short, sickle-shaped; the outer web attenuated,
and the inner dilated, towards the point. Tail broad, rounded, of
twelve feathers. Under tail-coverts, large, nearly reaching the
tip. Claws obtuse. Beak slender, upper mandible curved, blunt at
tip; lower mandible straight; both rounded at edges; the _rami_
of the lower soldered together at about half the length, where
the cavity is nearly obliterated. The mandibles do not close
accurately. Nostrils perforate.
This curious bird, which, from its anomalous formation, has been
a subject of considerable interest to ornithologists, seems to be
much better known by its form and plumage, than by its habits. I am
glad to be able to give some particulars of its history from my own
observation, as well as from that of my friend, Mr. Hill.
The Clucking-hen derives its provincial name from its ordinary
voice, when ranging its mountain solitudes. One day in August, I was
collecting mosses on the Bluefields Peak, where it is densely covered
with tall but slender wood, when Sam called my attention to this bird,
which we heard walking at a little distance, around us, crackling the
dried sticks and stones, and clucking deliberately with a voice exactly
resembling that of a sauntering fowl. I sent the lad round to drive
it gently towards me, while I remained still; and presently I saw it
walking swiftly to and fro, but a few yards distant. While Sam was
pursuing it it rose to wing, and alighted again immediately; but soon
ran into the recesses of the woods beyond reach.
The negroes often assured me that a precipitous gully, that cleaves the
mountain behind Bluefields, thickly clothed with large timber, abounded
with these birds, but it was not until February that I obtained a
specimen. At that time the parching drought having wasted the mountain
pools, I was told that Clucking-hens might be met with in numbers, at
the edge of the woods around the spot where the spring of Bluefields
River gushes out of the mountain’s foot. It was said that many were in
the habit of selecting high trees in that vicinity as roosting-places.
My servants having on several evenings heard the loud cries of these
birds proceeding from the spot, I sent them thither one evening to
watch. As night drew on, the birds were seen and heard around, and
though they could not obtain a shot, they succeeded in getting a more
definite knowledge of the individual trees selected.
An evening or two afterwards, I myself went to the spot with them:
before sunset the loud cry of one was heard, apparently descending
the mountain, but it was not until the grey twilight was fading into
darkness that we began to hear them screaming and flying around.
The notes were singular; sometimes a series of shrill screams were
uttered in succession, then a harsh cry, _krau, krau, krau, kreaow_.
All were loud, sudden, and startling. More than one alighted on a
large hog-plum not far off, a tree which they seem to affect, but were
too wary to allow of my approaching within gun-shot. Sam, who was
watching a hundred yards distant, was more fortunate, for as I was
stealthily creeping towards my bird, I heard the report of his piece,
and had the satisfaction of learning that he had secured his game, the
first specimen of this interesting bird that I had an opportunity of
examining.
The ordinary spring-rains were distressingly deficient in 1846; and
hence I presume it was, that, through the month of April, several birds
of this species were in the habit of frequenting the morasses on each
side of the swiftly-flowing Paradise River. Where the bridle-path
called the Short Cut crosses the stream, there grow many bushes of
Black-Withe, about as large as an ordinary apple-tree; many of these
are clothed with a dense and matted drapery of convolvolus so thick as
to hide the bush completely. On the very summit of these bushes, the
Clucking-hens might often be seen at early day, the tangled creepers
affording a support for their broad feet, where they stood and turned
without sinking and without embarrassment. They stood boldly erect,
as if watching, their dark figures relieved against the sky, in an
attitude exactly like that of an Ibis, though they flirted the tail in
the manner of a Rail. At brief intervals they uttered a short sharp
sound, and sometimes the loud harsh scream, _krēaow_. On being alarmed,
they flew heavily and slowly, with the long legs hanging down, and the
neck stretched forward, having a very awkward appearance in the air.
About June, they had again retired to the loftier elevations: at the
middle of that month, I used to hear their loud cries at an early hour,
on the mountains of Grand Vale and Hampstead, above Content. There
was a large pond just within the woods, to which they resorted; for
the drought still prevailed. My young friend, who had often seen them
there, informed me that they scratch and pick like a fowl.
The head and beak of the Clucking-hen bears an obvious resemblance to
those of the following species, _Rallus longirostris_, except that the
nasal grooves are nearly obliterated in the _Aramus_. The feet also are
similar. The sternum is that of neither _Rallus_ nor _Ardea_, but is
closely like that of _Psophia_.
A female was brought me on the 1st of April, in the afternoon, which
had been just shot as it was standing in shallow water at Bluefields
river-head, fishing. The freshness of the subject enabled me to examine
it carefully. The stomachic sac consisted of a gizzard separated by a
narrow constriction from a long proventriculus, about twice as large
as the gizzard, and of a sub-oval, flattened form. This was divided
by the structure of the parietes into two very distinct parts, the
upper portion being much thickened, and studded with small round
glands, so as to look like shagreen. The lower and larger portion was
muscular, the inner surface having longitudinal _rugæ_. The gizzard was
comparatively smooth within, and thinner than the proventriculus. The
latter was stuffed with small water-snails (_Ampullaria_), divested
of the shells, but not, in all cases, of the opercula, which filled
even the œsophagus almost to the fauces. In the upper part of the
proventriculus, the snails were little changed; in the lower they
were macerated and more slimy, but in the gizzard there was nothing
but a hard mass of blackish, almost homogeneous matter, nearly dry by
the expression of its moisture. The intestinal canal measured fifty
inches; (in another specimen forty-two inches;) about an inch from the
cloaca, the cæca branched off, the left longer by half an inch than
the right. I could find no gall-bladder. The body, when divested of the
integuments is compressed, but not so decidedly as in either Herons or
Rails.
In the male bird the trachea at the distance of about two inches above
the furcula, takes an immense convolution, forming a complicated knot;
the form of the turnings is not always the same, nor is their extent;
I have seen one much more complicated than in the specimen dissected
by Mr. Eyton,[112] and some less so. The volutions are connected by
a mesentery. At the point where the bronchi divaricate, the trachea
dilates into a large oval box. In the female the trachea is quite
simple, having no trace of the convolution, nor of the bronchial box.
I hence infer that the loud startling cries are uttered only by the
male. As in the Rails, the abdominal viscera are very large; the cæca
in particular, when distended, are enormous.
[112] Ann. and Mag. of N.H., Jan. 1846.
Robinson states that the Aramus feeds upon snakes, toads, and
lizards, as well as wood-snails, and gully-crabs, yet not on his own
observation, but on the authority of “people of credit, who have seen
junks of undigested snakes and lizards taken out of their craws.”
This is not confirmed, however, by my own observation, gasteropod
mollusca having been found in every specimen I have examined. Mr.
Hill’s observation does not confirm the former statement. Of one which
was sent to him in July 1842, he remarks, “Having opened the craw
for the purpose of ascertaining the food it had been eating, I found
nothing but a quantity of a dark pulverulent substance, very much
resembling decayed wood; a substance which a bird with such a bill as
the Clucking-hen has, might be supposed to pick up with the worms it
might find in the decaying wood. There was no trace of any animal body,
neither wings of beetles, nor vertebræ of lizards.” It may be added
that this specimen when discovered, “flew from where a limb of rotten
log-wood had been broken off; perhaps it was eating some of the large
wood-worms.”
Mr. Eyton’s bird was sent from Honduras: if it had been a Jamaican
specimen, I should have guessed that the zoophyte which seemed to
resemble a sea-anemone, was a large species of _Vaginulus_ common in
the mountains.
From the general, though not total, absence of the shells of the snails
which I have found, I judge that the shell is crushed with the beak,
and shaken off before the snail is swallowed. The opercula, which are
frequently found attached, have enabled me to recognise the genera
_Ampullaria_, _Cyclostoma_, and _Helicina_; the latter two, terrestrial
snails.
The piercing cries with which the Clucking-hen salutes the approach
of night, are little heard at any other time: during the day it more
commonly emits the deliberate clucking above mentioned, as it saunters
hither and thither in the mountain-woods, or among the cocoes of the
provision-grounds. We sometimes hear the harsh sounds proceeding from
the forest, even after night has established its dominion, and hence,
probably, it has been considered a nocturnal bird; I suspect, however,
that these cries are not the accompaniments of activity, but the
harbingers of repose, emitted while sitting on the roosting tree, or
while flying to and fro in preparation for alighting; the cries which
are heard at a rather later hour marking, probably, the awaking from
the first sleep, as they soon relapse into silence.
In the woods of the parish of St. David’s these birds are said to
be abundant, as also in the mountainous districts of St. Ann’s, St.
Dorothy’s, and the Coona-coonas. Swift of foot, if not of wing, the
Aramus does not confine itself, however, to one or two localities,
but ranges, with rapid sidelong strides, the lonely woods from the
mountain-tops to the mangrove morasses of the shore. Solitary and shy,
it is a difficult bird to approach, but when obtained is esteemed by
some as “the best wildfowl of the country.” “The flesh of this bird,”
says Dr. Chamberlaine, “acquires, about the termination of the year,
that plumpness, which gives it a claim to be placed in the catalogue of
edible birds. It is then esteemed fit for the table, and may be dressed
in two ways; viz., in fricassée, or roasted like the Guinea-birds, and
smothered, after being cut up, in a rich salade.” Mr. Hill observes of
the specimen which came into his possession; “I directed the whole of
the muscles on either side of the _sternum_ to be cut out and cooked.
I found its flavour indescribably fine, a compound of hare, partridge,
and pigeon. The flesh was of peculiarly close and compact texture, and
as peculiarly tender.” I would add to these, my own testimony to its
excellence.
Of its domestic economy, I know nothing, except that Robinson asserts,
that “it lays nine eggs in December.” In February, I found eggs in
the ovary of a female, as large as small peas: another, in June, had
about half-a-dozen a little larger than peas, about a dozen as large as
pigeon-shot, and many small.
Mr. Hill, in a letter written since my return to England, informs me,
that “for the last month of the late drought, [summer of 1846] numbers
of Clucking Aramuses made their appearance about the river-swamps and
marshes in the Caymanas district of this parish. They were a bird
almost unknown in these plains. As slugs and snails were very plentiful
in these, the only moist places at that time, we perceive what the
attraction to this locality was, that brought them so numerously
together, beside the desire for water.”
The Clucking-hen was among the birds sent from Cuba by Mr. Mac Leay.