“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. +Order.+—GYRANTES. (_Circlers._) +Fam.+—COLUMBADÆ. (_The pigeons._) RING-TAIL PIGEON.[85] _Columba Caribbea._ _Columba Caribbea_, +Linn.+—Temm. Pig. pl. 10. _Columba lamprauchen_, +Wagl.+