_Erismatura spinosa._
_Anas spinosa_, +Lath.+—Pl. enl. 967.
[127] Length 13¹⁄₂ inches, expanse 19¹⁄₂, flexure 5¹⁄₁₀, tail 2¹⁄₂,
breadth of beak at tip ¹³⁄₂₀, rictus 1¹⁄₂, tarsus 1³⁄₁₀, middle
toe 2. Irides black; beak glaucous green, culmen blackish, under
mandible colour of the nails; feet yellowish-grey, webs paler.
Upper head deep bistre; neck minutely mottled with bistre and pale
umber. Back, scapulars, and less wing-coverts bistre, each feather
tipped and transversely banded with pale umber; feathers on rump
velvety, minutely mottled with deep brown and whitish. Tail-coverts
mottled with dark brown and bright bay. Tail of 18 feathers, very
narrow, black, worn at tips, the shafts extending beyond the vanes.
Wings smoke-black; first primary rudimentary; second and third
sub-equal; the first five secondaries have the basal three-fourths
of the outer webs pure white, and their greater coverts wholly
white, forming a white patch in centre of wing. Sides of head
marked by two bands of brown, one passing through the eye, the
other from rictus to ear; over each of which is a parallel band of
pale brown. Chin and throat pale bay, satiny; breast and belly pale
buff, mottled obscurely with blackish. Tail-coverts both above and
below, hardly differing from clothing-feathers. Inner surface of
wings shining grey. Form broad and flattened.
In a broad piece of water near Radonda, which is crossed by the high
road from Savanna le Mar to Negril, and which is connected with the
vast morass that lies behind the former town, I have seen these
curious little Ducks. Rarely more than three are visible at one time,
scattered over the water, often very near the road. They pay very
little attention to passing travellers; but if one stop and gaze at
them, they take alarm, and sink the body lower into the water, until
the back is level with the surface. If they suspect danger, they
gradually sink wholly under water; and if suddenly alarmed they thus
immerse themselves in a moment, _not diving_ as other water birds do,
_but sinking as they sit_, causing scarcely a ruffle of the surface. I
have found them excessively wary, and difficult to shoot; because if
they come up and still suspect danger, they immediately sink again, and
remain beneath an incredible while, even for several hours, unless they
can manage to expose the nostrils to the surface without appearing.
When they do rise, it is in the same noiseless, almost imperceptible
manner, and in the same posture as they went down. Occasionally they
fly, or rather flutter with much flapping of wings, and apparently
painful exertion, across the pond, splashing the surface as they go;
and I have seen one take a higher flight across the road to the lower
water. When undisturbed, they sit long in one place, and spend a good
deal of time in smoothing their plumage.
The stomach of the specimen I obtained, a male, from which the
description was taken, contained only seeds mostly comminuted.
* * * * *
From a recent letter of Mr. Hill’s I extract the following notes. “We
have certainly two if not three different Pond Ducks. With two I am
familiarly acquainted. One is a very beautiful little bird, with such
a prevalence of yellow and red ochre in the plumage, and with the
usual crescent shaped ocellated markings of the Duck tribe, so dark,
as to give it a very quail-like appearance. It has in consequence been
commonly designated the Quail-duck.[128] The secondaries of the wing
are white; the head is dappled black and ochry-white, and the bill is
a brilliant cobalt-blue. The tail is stiff and curved upwards, with
(I think) 16 black feathers which radiate broad and distinct, without
any lapping of one feather over another. In the _nestling_ bird the
feathers are differently formed. They are unwebbed in the centre of
the shaft, the terminal plumes being few, and curved like the Υ of the
Greek alphabet.
[128] Hence my friend proposes to name it _Erismatura ortygoides_.
“The other is a short squat Duck, almost square in form, the breadth
of its body being equal to its length, and uniformly coloured
_wood-brown_;—a description of the plumage not perhaps very precise,
but so much so with respect to the ordinary hue of the bark of trees,
as to make it sufficiently indicative of the prevailing colour. The
centre shafts of the tail of this bird terminate in long stiff spines,
as stiff and as long as those of a horse-comb.
“I shall not venture to say how far similarity of structure in the
tail of the Erismaturine family of Ducks with that of the Cormorant,
indicates a similarity in the application of this organ for diving
purposes, as Mr. Eyton has conjectured; but a bird kept in a small
pool in a flower garden, into which pond-weeds were daily thrown,
particularly _chara_ and duck-weed, (_pistiaceæ_) upon which it was
supposed to feed, would lead me to think that one important purpose
that this remarkably constructed organ was applied to, was to move
aside the dense vegetation of shallow pools in which it fed. The
habit of this bird was to turn round quick. By this motion it opened
out the weeds on the surface, so graphically described by Shakspeare
as ‘the green mantle of the standing pool,’—and made a clear space
for ‘swithering with its neb,’ as Lincolnshire decoy-keepers would
say. It dived frequently, and the period it remained submerged was
prodigiously long. It swam backward as frequently as forward, and, I
apprehend, found its peculiarly made tail a powerful lever in dilating
the space behind it. The little garden, in which the bird was kept,
that furnished me with these observations, was a fair representation of
its natural haunts. Tufts of flowers, composed of lilies, kincalmias,
and Indian-shot, with intermixtures of young vegetating bananas, were
an apt substitute for the heliconias, nymphæas, cyperaceæ, juncales,
and marantaceous plants, among which it delighted when wild and at
large. It sometimes crept on the bank, and sheltered itself among the
bowery herbage; but the clots of damp weed, strewn around its pond,
were its favourite resting place when out of the water; and there it
sat _crouching_, not sitting upright as the Grebe does. In its natural
haunts it is occasionally flushed, but its flight is exceedingly short,
not usually more than from the bank into the mantling herbage of the
pond, where it instantly disappears in those long submersions I have
already noticed.”
* * * * *
The remaining _Anatidæ_ which have been observed in Jamaica, I shall
dismiss with a bare enumeration, furnished by my esteemed friend to
whom this work is so deeply indebted. Though some of them have fallen
under my own notice, I have nothing to add to their known history.
I treat them in this summary manner, the more willingly, because my
friend is himself preparing for the press a treatise on the migratory
birds of Jamaica, the fruit of many years’ close observation.
_Chen hyperboreus_, Snow Goose.
_Anser Canadensis_, Canada Goose.
_Dafila acuta_, Pintail.
_Pœcilonetta Bahamensis_, Ilathera Duck.
_Mareca Americana_, Wigeon.
_Aix sponsa_, Summer Duck.
_Querquedula Carolinensis_, Greenwing Teal.
_Rhynchaspis clypeata_, Shoveler.
_Chaulelasmus streperus_, Gadwall.
_Anas obscura_, Dusky Duck.
” _boschas_, Mallard.
_Cairina moschata_, Muscovy Duck.
_Oidemia perspicillata_, Surf Duck (Dr. Chamb.).
_Fuligula Americana_, Pochard.
” _affinis_, Scaup Duck.
” _rufitorques_, Tufted Duck.
_Nyroca leucophthalma_, White-eyed Duck.
+Fam.+—PELECANIDÆ. (_The Pelicans._)