Though its usual mode of progression on the ground is by hopping, or rather bounding, the feet being lifted together, the Blackbird is seen occasionally to run in a headlong manner for a short distance, moving the feet alternately. He is fond of sitting in the morning sun on a low tree with the wings expanded; remaining there perfectly still for a considerable time. In the heat of the day, in July and August, many may be seen in the lowland plains, sitting on the fences and logwood hedges with the beaks wide open, as if gasping for air; they then forget their usual loquacity and wariness. Often two or three will sit in the centre of a thick bush, overhung with a matted drapery of convolvolus, whence they utter their singular cry in a calling tone, as if they were playing at hide-and-seek, and requiring their fellows to come and find them.
The statement that the Blackbird builds in company, forming an immense nest of basket-work by the united labours of the flock, is universally maintained by the inhabitants of the colony. It is said to be usually on a high tree, where many parents bring forth and educate a common family. Mr. Hill, whose statements in Jamaican Ornithology are worthy of unlimited confidence, observes: “Some half-a-dozen of them together build but one nest, which is large and capacious enough for them to resort to in common, and to rear their young ones together. They are extremely attentive to the business of incubation, and never quit the nest, while sitting, without covering the eggs with leaves, to preserve them at an equal temperature.” The only instance in which I ever met with a nest, while it is not conclusive, is rather in favour of this opinion than the opposite. In July I found a Blackbirds’ nest in a Bastard Cedar (Guazuma); it was a rather large mass of interwoven twigs lined with leaves. Eight eggs were in the nest, and the shells of many more were also in it, and scattered beneath the tree. The eggs were about as large as a pullet’s, very regularly oval, of a greenish blue, but covered with a coating of white chalky substance, which was much scratched and eroded on them all, and which was displaced with little force. On being broken, the interior was peculiar; the glaire was less tenacious than usual, but more jelly-like, yet at the same time thinner in consistence; but what surprised me was, that in each egg this glaire filled at least three-fourths of the whole space, while the yolk, flattened in form, not larger in diameter than a coat-button-mould, and about twice as thick, was adhering to one side and end. It was pale, and resembled in appearance that of a hen’s egg, when just turned by boiling. I examined several, and found all alike.
I close this account with some pleasing notes of the species by Mr. Hill. “Though the Savanna Blackbird is classed among the scansorial or climbing tribe of birds, and has the yoke-formed foot,—like another class of the Cuckoo tribe among us, of which we have four or five different kinds,—it is generally a downward, not an upward climber. It enters a tree by alighting on the extremity of some main branch, and gains the centre of the foliage by creeping along the stem, and searching for its insect food. Unlike, however, our Cuckoos, which are solitary-feeding birds, it does not range from stem to stem, and search the tree through. The Blackbirds, moving in flocks of half-dozens, tens, and twelves, seldom penetrate far among the leaves. They glance along the branches rapidly, and silently quit the tree they have visited, by dropping one by one on some inviting spot on the green sward under them, or start away suddenly, the whole possé together, to some near-by thicket, to which one among them generally leads with that peculiar shrill and screaming cry that distinguishes them from every other bird of the field.
“These Savanna Blackbirds are favourites with me. Other winged wanderers have their season, but these are the tenants of the field all the year round. Their life is in the sunshine. Wherever there are open lands in tillage or pasture, with intermingled trees and shrubs, there these social birds frequent:—always familiar and seemingly fearless, but never omitting to set their sentinel watchmen to sound their cry when any one obtrudes nearer upon them than to a certain space within their social haunts.
“After a passing fall of rain, one of our sudden mid-day thunder showers for instance, when the full burst of sunshine, bright and fierce, breaks again on the freshened landscape;—the first bird seen creeping out from the thicket to dry his wings, and regain the fields, is the Savanna Blackbird. The Mocking-bird, ready as he is with his song, to gladden the landscape once more, is seldom before the shrill Blackbird, in breaking the hush that succeeds the overpast shower. Que-yuch, que-yuch, que-yuch is heard from some embowered clump not far off, and a little stream of Blackbirds, with their long tails and short gliding wings outstretched in flight, are seen straggling away to some spot, where insect-life is stirring, in the fresh, damp, and exuberant earth. The sun is levelling its slant beam along the plains, and the sea-breeze is breathing fresh and fragrant with a sense of reviving moisture from the afternoon showers, que-yuch, que-yuch, que-yuch is heard again, hastily and anxiously repeated; and the little birds are seen scrambling into the hedge-rows, and the Blackbirds are pushing from the outer limbs of the solitary thicket, from whence they sounded their cry of alarm, to gain the inward covert of the leaves. A hawk with silent stealth is skimming along the bordering woodland, gliding occasionally downward to the lesser bushes in the Savanna. The tocsin of the Blackbird, however, has warned the whole field, and not a voice is heard, and not a wing is stirring.
“In the hot and sultry days when the dews have ceased to fall, and all vegetation is parched and languid, the Blackbirds are seen wending their way at an early hour of the afternoon to the riverside, trooping in little parties. They have found some spot where an uprooted tree has grounded in the shallow stream. Here they are perched, some tail upward, drinking from the gliding waters below, some silent and drooping, some pluming themselves, and some in the sands that have shoaled about the embedded trunk of the tree, washing in the little half-inch depths of water. They will continue here till sunset, when they will start off laggingly, the signal being first given by some one of the flock, who has announced, that it is time to seek their coverts for the night, with the still peculiar cry of que-yuch.”
I am inclined to attach very little importance to the wrinkles on the beak as indicating specific difference: these, as well as the form and size of the organ, varying considerably in individuals from the same locality; the result, I have no doubt, of age.