BLUE QUIT.[66]
Euphonia Jamaica.
| Fringilla Jamaica, | Linn. |
| Euphonia Jamaica, | Desm. |
| Grey Grosbeak, | Brown.—Ill. Zool. pl. 26. |
[66] Length 4½ inches, expanse 8, flexure 2⁶⁄₁₀, tail 1⁵⁄₁₀, rictus ⁵⁄₁₀, tarsus ¾, middle toe ¹¹⁄₂₀. Irides deep hazel: feet dark grey; beak grey, the fissure, ridge and tip black.
Male. Upper parts slate blue, glossy, more or less tinged on the rump with green. Throat, breast, and sides pale grey: belly yellow; under tail coverts greyish white. The blue on the wing-quills nearly black.
Female. Loins, upper tail-coverts, and thighs, yellow-green; no yellow on the belly. Otherwise as the male.
A short stumpy bird, and rather inelegant from the shortness of its tail, the Blue Quit reminds me of the Nut-hatches. It is very common about homesteads, where it frequents fruit-trees, particularly the sops: it is, however, nowise infrequent in the woods, both on the mountains and in the lowlands. It hops busily about the twigs and fruits, picking in any position, back or belly, head or tail, uppermost. When the sour-sop is ripe, they flock to it in such numbers, that the tree appears covered with them: the negro children then set limed twigs for them, and I have had them brought to me thus as fast as they could be taken down. The boys cut diagonal notches into the bark of a naseberry tree, (Achras), or score an unripe fruit; a white milk exudes, so abundant as to drop quickly, and is caught on a leaf. At first it has the consistence of thin cream, but half an hour’s exposure thickens it, and gives it tenacity enough to be drawn into threads; when they consider it “ripe.” A twig smeared with this “gum,” is stuck into the half-eaten sour-sop or custard-apple, presenting a very inviting perch to the hungry birds. One soon hops on the fatal twig, and is in an instant fluttering helplessly, fast at the feet. Banana birds, Mocking birds, and Cashew birds are also taken in this way. The appearance of the intestinal viscera at such a season, is very singular, being distended with the white pulp throughout their length, perfectly visible from the transparency of the intestines. At first the stomach seems to be wanting, and this much surprised me; but the fact is, that organ is simply a thin membranous sac, or rather canal, differing in no apparent respect from the intestine, save in slightly increased capacity.
The musical powers of our little Blue Quit are considerable: it is a sweet and constant song-bird. It has various notes; frequently it chirps pertinaciously, like the Humming birds; at other times it utters a long “twee,” like the Chicken-Hawk; sometimes it delights in a soft warbling repetition of a single note; sometimes its voice is closely like the plaintive mewing of a kitten. But besides these it has a real song, sweet and musical. In March at Spanish Town, I heard two, apparently both males, warbling close together on a genip-tree opposite my window, very sweetly but hurriedly. When one flew to another twig the other presently followed. By and bye they ceased that melody, and one took to a strain consisting of about a dozen rapid repetitions of the same note, ending with one elevated note, with a jerking abruptness. This strain he repeated several times.
About the middle of April, a pair of Blue Quits built a nest on one of the topmost branches of a high fiddle wood in the yard of Bluefields house. The tree was much infested with that parasite called Old man’s beard, large bunches of which grew on most of the limbs and boughs, so numerously as to touch each other in long successions. Two of these contiguous bunches the birds had managed to separate, either by picking away portions, or by pushing them apart, so as to open a large hollow, and in this they built a very snug domed nest. It was globular in form, about as large as an infant’s head, with an opening in one side, composed of dry grass, the dried stems of the Tillandsia, tendrils of passion-flower, bits of rag, profusely intermixed with cotton and the down of plants; yet these soft substances were not used to line the structure, the grass only appearing in the inside. Perhaps it was not finished, for the birds were passing in and out, and thus betrayed its existence, for so identified was it in appearance with the bunches around, that but for this ingress and egress, and the little opening, I could not have detected it. I sent up a lad to examine it, but in so doing, he partially broke the branch, causing it to hang down; and this I presume awakened suspicion, for the birds deserted it, and in a few days I had it taken down. It was empty.