This bird,[76] in Brown’s History of Jamaica, is called “Whip-tom-kelly,” from the supposed resemblance of its notes to these articulate sounds, and this popular appellation has been given it by various other writers. Mr. Gosse, however, in his Birds of Jamaica, calls this bird “John-to-whit,” and can find no resemblance in its notes to the words referred to. He describes its song as uttered with incessant iteration and untiring energy, and as resembling Sweet-John! John to whit! sweet John to whit! After July the
notes change to to-whit-to-whoo, and sometimes to a soft, simple chirp, whispered so gently as scarcely to be audible. The name of Whip-tom-kelly Mr. Gosse never heard applied to it in Jamaica. Yet it is a bird often heard, and one whose notes have a similarity to articulate sounds, and naturally suggest a common appellation. It is very vociferous and pertinacious in its calls, repeating them with energy every two or three seconds.
This species, he states, does not ordinarily sit on a prominent twig, or dart out after insects, though it has been seen in eager pursuit of a butterfly. It seems to live in the centre of thick woods. It does not pass the winter in Jamaica, but leaves at the beginning of October, returning as early as the 20th of March. Its food he states to be both animal and vegetable, as he found in its stomach the seeds of the tropical plants and berries. In April, Mr. Gosse observed it hunting insects by the borders of the Bluefields River, and so intent upon its occupation as to allow of a very near approach. It sought insects among the grass and low herbage, perching on the stalks of weeds, and darting out after both vagrant and stationary prey. They incubate in June and July.
Like all this genus the Long-billed Vireo builds a pensile nest of great architectural ingenuity and beauty. It is a deep cup, usually about two thirds of a sphere in shape, truncated at the top. The materials of which it is made are often somewhat coarse. Mr. Gosse describes it as about as large as an ordinary teacup, narrowed at the mouth, composed of dry grasses, silk, cotton, lichens, and spiders’-web. It is usually suspended from the fork of two twigs, the margin very neatly overwoven to embrace them. The materials are well interwoven, and the walls firm and close, though not very thick. The whole is smoothly lined with slender vegetable fibres resembling human hair. One nest had its cavity nearly filled with a mass of white cotton, interwoven with the other materials, which, being picked cotton, had evidently been taken from some yard or building.
The eggs of this species are three in number, of a brilliant white, delicately tinted with pink, and marked with a few fine red and red-brown spots, usually about the larger end.
An egg of the variety from Cuba is of an oblong-oval shape, slightly pointed at one end, and the markings of faint purple and of dark purplish-brown, in bold dashes, are all about the larger end. Another from the same locality is more distinctly rounded at one and pointed at the other end, and is marked with fine brown dots distributed over the whole egg. These eggs measure, one .825 by .55 of an inch, and the other .78 by .55. An egg from Jamaica is of an extremely oblong-oval, measuring .88 by .55 of an inch, and is boldly marked more or less over the entire egg with large blotches of purplish-brown.
The Messrs. Newton describe the nest of the calidris of St. Croix as a beautiful structure, shaped like an inverted cone, composed outwardly of dried blades of grass, dried leaves, and wool, woven round the twigs, to which it
was attached with spiders’-webs, lined inside with finer blades of grass, and about three inches and a half in diameter, and five in height. The eggs, three in number, were white, with a few black spots, chiefly disposed about the larger end.
Vireosylvia olivaceus, Bonap.
RED-EYED GREENLET.