This is among the commonest of Jamaican birds, being abundant in all situations, from the shores to the summits of the mountains. His loud screams as he darts along from one dead tree to another, perpetually betray his proximity even before we see him. Like the rest of his tribe, his flight consists of a series of undulations, or rather a succession of arcs of a circle, performed by alternate strokes and closures of the wings. Though rapid and rushing in its character, it does not extend to long distances, nor does it appear capable of protraction, the wings having the shortness and hollowness which mark a subordinate power of flight. Occasionally he alights on a horizontal branch, but if so, it is lengthwise, not across, as other birds perch; neither does he stand up on the toes, elevating the tarsi, but squats down close to the wood, clinging rather than perching. Far more usually, however, he flies direct to the trunk, on whose perpendicular side he alights as suddenly as if he had been stuck there, and either commences rapping with his powerful beak, or hops upward till he finds a more promising scene of operations. If he wishes to descend, which he does but seldom, it is backward and in a diagonal direction; or sometimes he turns, so as to come down sideways, but it is never more than a short distance, and is performed so awkwardly, and in so scrambling a manner, as to indicate that he is not formed for descending. His food is not confined to boring larvæ; the large red ants, so common in the woods, I have found numerous in his stomach; and at other times, hard strong seeds enclosed in a scarlet pulpy skin. In March we sometimes find him filled with the white pulp and oval seeds of the sour-sop. He is said to feed on the beautiful cherries (_Cordia collococca_) which in brilliant bunches are ripe at the same season; and I have seen him engaged in picking off the pretty crimson berries, that hang like clusters of miniature grapes from the fiddlewood (_Cytharaxylon_). Sometimes he extracts the pulp of the orange, having cut a hole through the rind; and mangoes he eats in the autumn. He does damage to the sugar-cane, by chiselling away the woody exterior, and sucking out the juice, and gets shot for this feat, by the owners. I have never seen the nest, but I have seen the bird go in and out of a round hole, far up the stipe of a dead cocoa-nut palm, where doubtless it was nesting. +Fam.+—CUCULIDÆ.—(_The Cuckoos._) RAINBIRD.[80] _Saurothera vetula._ _Cuculus vetula_, +Linn.+—Pl. Enl. 772. _Saurothera vetula_, +Vieill.+—Gal. Ois. 38. [80] Length 15¹⁄₂ inches, expanse 14³⁄₁₀, flexure 4⁶⁄₁₀, tail 6³⁄₄, rictus 2¹⁄₁₀, tarsus 1⁶⁄₁₀, middle toe 1²⁄₁₀. Intestine 16 inches, very tender; two cæca, about 2 inches long. Irides hazel; orbits scarlet. The sexes exactly alike.