The birds of Jamaica

by Philip Henry Gosse

YELLOW FACE GRASS-QUIT.[70]

Spermophila olivacea.

Emberiza olivacea,	Linn.
Fringilla lepida,	Ibid.
Passerina olivacea,	Vieill.
Spermophila olivacea,	Sw.

[70] Length 4¹⁄₈ inches, expanse 6¾, flexure 2, tail 1⁷⁄₁₀, rictus ⁷⁄₂₀, tarsus ⁷⁄₁₀, middle toe ⁶⁄₁₀. Irides dark hazel; feet purplish; beak horny black.

Male. Upper parts olive; a stripe over the eye, a minute one under the eye, and the chin and throat, rich yellow, narrowly edged with black; lower throat and breast black, merging into the olive; belly very pale olive; vent and under tail coverts almost white. Wing-quills blackish, edged with olive; edge of shoulder yellow. Tail olive.

In the female the black is absent, and the yellow is less conspicuous.

Immediately behind the homestead of Bluefields, a lane, confined for a mile or two between dry-stone walls, leads to the road which winds in a zig-zag line to the top of the Bluefields ridge. This lane possesses many attractions. By the wall on each side grow trees, which afford grateful shade, and many of them load the evening air with dewy fragrance. Orange-trees, profusely planted, give out in spring gushes of odour from their waxen blossoms, and in autumn tempt the eye with their “golden fruitage.” The Pride of China, lovely in its graceful leaves and spikes of lilac blossoms, and not less sweet-scented than the orange; the pimento, dense and glossy, with another, but not inferior, character of beauty; are varied by the less showy, but still valuable, cedar and guazuma. The various species of echites trail their slender stems and open their brilliant flowers, along the top of the wall, and the pretty Banisteria displays its singular yellow blossoms, or scarlet berries at its foot; while near the top of the lane, tangled and matted masses of the night-blowing cereus depend from the trees, or sprawl over the walls, expanding their magnificent, sun-like flowers, only to “the noon of night.” Here and there huge black nests of termites look like barrels built into the wall, whose loose stones, grey with exposure, and discoloured with many-tinted lichens, afford a sombre relief to the numerous large-leafed arums that climb and cluster above them. To the left the mountain towers, dark and frowning; the view on the right is bounded by a row of little rounded hills, studded with trees and clumps of pimento. But between the traveller and either, extend the fields of guinea-grass, which are enclosed by these boundary walls. In the autumn, when the grass is grown tall, and the panicles of seed waving in the wind give it a hoary surface, the little Grass-quits, both of this and the following species, throng hither in numerous flocks, and perching in rows on the slender stalks, weigh them down, while they rifle them of the farinaceous seeds.

In March, I have found the stomach of the Yellow-face full of seeds of the common pasture grasses; and I have been struck with the enormous dilatation of the membranous craw, which, as in the Gallinaceæ, occupies the hollow of the furcula.

D’Orbigny, who has given a good figure of it, in Sagra’s Cuba, alludes to its prevalence in all the great Antilles. At the Havanna, he says it is frequently caged, being very docile, and readily learning to sing. I have never heard from it any other note than a quivering chirrup as it flits from bush to bush.

Mr. Hill has favoured me with the following note. “Nests of the Grass-bird are frequently brought to me, but without distinguishing between the yellow and the black-throated species. A nest in the garden, built in a Nerium oleander, by the latter, [in July,] enables me to set down a remark or two. I see no difference in the structure of the nests of the two species. They are both domed nests, made of pliable dry grass, and lined with horse-hair. This nest is built between the forks of the long vertical stems of the oleander, or South Sea rose. Three other vertical stems press it close, and the leaves quite canopy it over. The substratum of the nest, on which it may be said to be bedded, is a mass of long linen rags, wound in and round the forked branch. It is quite true that the Grass-bird very frequently selects a shrub, on which the wasps have built, fixing the entrance close to their cells. I saw a nest in this secure situation a few years ago; it was pointed out to me as illustrating a habit of the yellow-throated species.