The abundance of birds on the four largest islands of the West Indian
archipelago, where indigenous mammals are almost limited to rodents
and bats, has often suggested the conjecture that the ancestors of
those islanders must have been immigrants from the east coasts of the
American mainland; and that theory seems to be confirmed by two facts:
the identity, or similarity, of numerous Mexican and West Indian
species, and the circumstance that those analogies include so many
swift-winged birds.
There are no woodpeckers in the forests of the Antilles, and only two
species of large gallinaceous birds, but a prodigious variety of
pigeons, swallows, finches, and crows. The _alcedos_ (kingfishers) are
scarce, but the blackbirds so numerous that some of the countless
species seem to claim a South American and even transatlantic
ancestry. The restless _estornino_ of the Cuban highland forests, for
instance, might be mistaken for a varnished starling, resembling the
_Sturnus vulgaris_ of western Europe in everything but the more
brilliant luster of its plumage. The curious _codornilla_, or dove
quail, too, has its nearest relatives on the other side of the
Atlantic, in Syria, Arabia, and the foothills of the Atlas. It builds
its nest on the ground and, judging from its appearance, would seem to
form a connecting link between the doves and small _gallinæ_; but its
wings are those of a pigeon, and with the assistance of a northeast
gale may possibly have carried it across the ocean.
[Illustration: CROWN PIGEON.]
In studying the geographical distribution of animals, we may estimate
the prevalence of special genera by the number of their varieties, or
by the aggregate sum of individuals, and in the latter sense the
migratory pigeons of our forest States once nearly outnumbered all the
other birds of North America, though the family is limited to five or
six species. But in the West Indies the _Columbidæ_ predominate in
both respects. Cuba is a country of wild pigeons as pre-eminently as
South Africa is a land of pachyderms and Madagascar of night monkeys.
The _Columba leucocephala_ (a congener of our ringdove) inhabits the
mountain forests in countless swarms, and at the end of the rainy
season visits grainfields in such numbers that hundreds are sometimes
captured in nets, by means of corn scattered along the furrows.
A closely allied variety is found in San Domingo, where in many upland
regions a darkey, equipped with a shotgun and a supply of gunpowder,
can dispense with agriculture and raise a family of anthropoids on
pigeon pies and _tortillas_, compounded from the grain found in the
crops of his victims.
But the _tittyblang_ (_tête-blanc_) has scores of smaller and larger
cousins, culminating in the Cuban primate of the family, the splendid
_paloma real_, with its coronet of pearl-gray plumes and dark-blue
wings.
[Illustration: CRESTED CURASSOW.]
[Illustration: PORTO RICO PARRAKEET.]
Ducks, too, must number some twenty West Indian species, and one kind
of wild geese often obliged the rice planters to employ mounted
sharpshooters, who galloped up and down the long dikes, yelling
blasphemies, and every now and then enforcing their quotations with a
handful of buckshot. But, for all that, the planter could think
himself lucky to gather a sixty-per-cent harvest of the total produce,
for experience soon enabled the long-necked depredators to estimate
the target range of the _cazador_ within a dozen yards and take wing
in the nick of time, only to resume their feast at the other end of
the plantation.
[Illustration: VERVAIN HUMMING BIRD AND NEST.]
A long-continued process of natural selection has also modified the
habits of numerous species of West Indian parrots. Four hundred years
ago, when Fernan Oviedo superintended the placer mines of Hayti,
_loris_ were so abundant and tame that his assistants often amused
themselves prowling about a thicket of berry bushes and capturing the
chattering visitors by means of a common ring net. Nestlings could be
taken from every hollow tree, and often from the thatchwork of
deserted Indian cabins; but the overconfident specimens came to grief,
and the survivors have learned to give the Caucasian varieties of the
_Simia destructor_ a wide berth. They raise their young in the
cavities of the tallest forest trees, and approach human habitations
only at dawn of day and sometimes during the noonday heat, when
creoles can be relied upon to indulge in a _siesta_ nap. In reliance
on their protective colors, gray parrakeets frequent the dead timber
of the coffee plantations, while the leaf-green Amazon parrot sticks
to leaf trees.
"When they alight on a dry branch," says Captain Gosse, in his Jamaica
chronicle, "their emerald hue is conspicuous and affords a fair mark
for the gunner, but in a tree of full foliage their color proves an
excellent concealment. They seem aware of this, and their sagacity
prompts them to rely on it for protection. Often we hear their voices
proceeding from a certain tree, or have marked the descent of a flock,
but on proceeding to the spot, though the eye has not wandered from
it, we can not discover an individual; we go close to the tree, but
all is silent; we institute a careful survey of every part with the
eye, to detect the slightest motion, or the form of a bird among the
leaves, but in vain, and we begin to think that they have stolen off
unperceived, but on throwing a stone into the tree a dozen voices
burst forth into cry, and as many green birds dart forth upon the
wing."
The gorgeous macaws, on the other hand, seem to owe their color
contrasts to sexual selection. "Ya son vencidos los pavos de
India"--"That does beat a Hindostan peacock"--exclaimed King
Ferdinand, when Columbus introduced those most splendid products of
the American tropics.
Nor can the exigencies of protection have evolved the glaring colors
of the West Indian hornbill. The _toco_ (toucan), as the Cubans call
the yellow-billed species, can be descried from a distance of two
hundred yards, and is, indeed, not anxious to be admired at close
range. Old specimens get as wary as mountain ravens, but, like crows,
become ridiculously tame in captivity, and will follow their
proprietors with loud croaks, every now and then opening their
lunch-trap to indicate their desire for refreshment. They are, on the
whole, the hardiest of all tropical birds, and can weather the winters
of our coast towns as far north as Wilmington, in open-air cages,
owing perhaps to their habit of extending their excursions to the high
mountain ranges of their native land.
[Illustration: THE SMALLEST BIRD.]
Economical Nature rarely wastes the gift of song on a bird of bright
plumage, but it is less easy to understand why so many feathered
beauties should have been afflicted with harsh and positively
repulsive voices. The horrid screams of the peacocks, guinea hens, and
macaws can hardly be supposed to charm their mates, and are too easily
recognized to deter their natural enemies. But the roars (there is no
more adequate word) of some species of hornbills would almost seem
intended to serve the latter purpose.
"The voice of the _Buceros bicornis_," says Wallace, "can be plainly
heard at a distance of a mile, so that the amazement of travelers
visiting its haunts seems explicable enough. Its screams may be
described as something between the bray of a jackass and the shriek of
a locomotive, and are not surpassed in power by any sound that an
animal is capable of making. They re-echo through the hills to such a
degree that it is difficult to assign the noise to a bird, and are
sometimes kept up so continuously as to become absolutely unbearable."
The condor and the harpy eagle have not found their way across the
Caribbean Sea, but the West Indies boast three varieties of fish
eagles, several species of mountain falcons, and a curious singing
owl, the _oriya_, that chants its serenades in the plaintive strain of
the whip-poor-will, and is dreaded by the Porto Rico darkeys as a bird
of ill-omen:
"Grita l'oriya: Venga amigo,
Venga conmigo a mi patria,
Venga te-digo!"
Small hooting owls abound, and there are four species of sparrow
hawks, one of them not much larger than a finch.
It is probably the smallest bird of prey, and there is no doubt that
one species of West Indian humming bird is the smallest bird on earth,
the _Vervain colibri_, of Jamaica, that hides its nest under an orange
leaf, and, though an insect-eater, could be easily overpowered by an
able-bodied bumblebee. In beauty some of the south Cuban species rival
those of the Amazon Valley, and frequent every flowering shrub from
the jungles of the coast lands to the highland meadows of the Sierra
Maestra. In Hayti there are parklike plateaus where they often appear
in swarms at a time of the year when the forests of the foothills are
drenched by the afternoon cloudbursts of the rainy season, and on some
of the smaller Antilles they are seen only during the flowering period
of special plants.
In the solitudes of the Morne Range (San Domingo) mountain ravens rear
their brood in the crevices of steep rocks, and fiercely attack birds
of prey, not excepting the black-crested eagle, that now and then
visits the sierras in quest of conies. But the winged constables of
the highlands rarely leave their mountain reservation. Of
Abd-el-Wahab, the Arabian heretic, it used to be said that "Mohammedan
zealots shrank in affright from his superior fanaticism," and on the
midway terraces of the Dominican sierras the persecution mania of the
giant crow yields to that of the great shrike, the _Lanius rufus_,
that operates pairwise and assails all winged comers with absolutely
reckless courage.
The raven of the Mornes seems to be identical with the cosmopolitan
forager that is found in the uplands of the eastern continent from
the bleak summit regions of the Hindu-Kush to the sierras of Portugal,
and from the Atlas to the Norwegian Alps; but there are several
exclusively West Indian species of the genus _Corvus_, including a
steel-blue rook that flits about the Cuban coffee plantations and has
a curious habit of perching on a stump and talking to itself in a sort
of croaking chuckle for half hours together.
The _gallinæ_, as might be expected from their limited wing-power, are
well represented in the number of individuals, rather than of species.
Turkeys, though abundant in the coast forests of Central America, are
not found wild in any part of the West Indies, where the perennial
presence of berries would be as inviting as the absence of foxes.
[Illustration: THE CARIBBEAN ALBATROSS.]
In the mountains some species of curassow have, however, developed
into a stately game bird, the _Oreophasis niger_, or highland
"pheasant," that lays a dozen large eggs, and in its courtship season
becomes so infatuated that it can be approached and killed with a
common walking-stick. The consequent persecution has made it rather
scarce in famine-stricken Cuba, but in Hayti it can still be seen in
troops of a dozen or more, scratching up the dry leaves of the sierra
forests, or pecking at insect-haunted shrubs, exactly like a flock of
Tennessee turkeys.
There are also several varieties of true pheasants, and two species of
quail (besides the above-mentioned _codornilla_), and in eastern Cuba
numerous barnyard chickens have taken to the woods and become so shy
that it seems a puzzle how their ancestors in the coast range of
Burmah could ever be captured and domesticated. They still practice
polygamy, combined with a system of co-operative housekeeping, to
judge from the number of eggs that are often found in one nest. At
the approach of an unfeathered biped the hen bird takes wing with a
screech, and is apt to vanish for the rest of that day. The roosters
are rarely seen, their glaring colors having faded into more
protective shades of olive and brown, but at dawn of day their shrill
reveille can be heard from afar in the heart of the pathless jungle
woods.
[_To be continued._]