[81] Length 19¹⁄₂ inches, expanse 19¹⁄₂, flexure 7¹⁄₂, tail 11³⁄₄, rictus 2, tarsus 1³⁄₄, middle toe 1¹⁄₂. Irides hazel; feet bluish grey; beak black, gonys pale grey. Plumage extremely loose and unwebbed. Head dark grey, merging on the neck into dark greyish-green, which is the hue of the back, rump, and wings, with metallic gloss. Tail feathers broad, graduated, glossy black, tipped with white, broadly on the outmost. Throat and breast white, the latter greyish; the remaining under parts deep red-brown. Eyelids blackish. Interior of mouth black. The appellation of Rainbird is indiscriminately applied to both this and the preceding, as is, in a less degree, that of Old Man. I use a term by which I have heard it distinguished, in St. Elizabeth’s, perhaps derived from the perseverance with which it “hunts” (i. e. searches) for its prey. The manners of this fine bird greatly resemble those of its relative, and its prey is also similar. It is a bird of large size and imposing aspect, and its puffed plumage and long barred tail give it an appearance of even greater magnitude than it possesses. Its voice is sometimes a cackling repetition of one sound, increasing in rapidity until the separate notes are undistinguishable. At other times it is a hoarse croaking. The craw projects below the sternum, and the skin of that part of the abdomen is destitute of feathers and even of down. The obesity of this bird is often extraordinary; I have seen the fat lying over the bowels, between the stomach and the vent, three-fourths of an inch thick. When alive, it has a strong musky odour, like that of the John-crow. “In the changes of our mountain roads,” remarks Mr. Hill, “from deep masses of shadowy forest, with prodigious trees overgrown with moss, and climbing shrubs and lianes, to luxuriant and park-like pastures, flowery hedgerows and shrubby thickets,—two sounds, remarkable and different from each other, prevail. The one is the tapping of the Woodpecker, broken in its measured monotony by an occasional scream; and the other the rattle of the Rainbird, varied by a cry at intervals like the caw of the Crow tribe. The deep forest is the haunt of the Woodpecker,—the open thickets the resort of the Rainbird. The insects which form the food of the one, are those that subsist out of the sun-light, and perforate the alburnum of trees, or live beneath the bark; those that are the prey of the other, are the tribes that find their sustenance on the surface of vegetation, exist in the shade, and only resort to the open air to shift from place to place.” YELLOW-BILLED CUCKOO.[82] _May-bird._ _Coccyzus Americanus._ _Cuculus Americanus_, +Linn.+—Aud. pl. 2. _Cuculus Carolinensis_, +Wils.+ _Coccyzus Americanus_, +Vieill.+ _Erythrophrys Americanus_, +Sw.+