“When I made my notes of the Flamingo, thought I had remarked what had hitherto been unobserved, respecting the ceaseless trampling of the feet while feeding; but I find Catesby has described it.... A correspondent of Buffon’s also, I perceive, communicated the same fact, with other incidents equally striking.... “There is nothing of the Heron character in the Flamingo. Extraordinary length of neck and legs is common to both, but a firm erect posture is its ordinary standing attitude. The neck is never curved inward and outward, convex and concave, like a Crane’s, but its movements are in long sweeping curves, which are peculiarly pleasing, when the bird is preening its plumage. “The bar at the mouth of the Rio Conta stretches some two miles and a half out to sea, with a narrow inlet about nine feet deep at high water. Here the Flamingoes, at the season when they associate in flocks, are congregated by hundreds. They feed divided into the lines I have explained already, and subdivided into companies. A scout on some advantageous point apart, where he may glance alternately at the lengthened reach of the river, and at the sweeping sinuosities of the coast, right and left, sounds his orders to the squadron. A sort of long-drawn trumpet-call is the signal of danger. At the warning to retreat, the whole troop rise on the wing crying and screaming. They fly in a stiff cruciform posture, with the neck extended swan-like, and the legs depending, but stretched behind so as to balance the flight. When thus suddenly alarmed, they rise to the height of the belt of mangroves that close in some neighbouring lagoon, and clearing the fringing woodland, drop within the impervious wilderness, and then feed no longer congregated, but dispersed about.” Robinson states that “the flesh is tough: they skin them and boil them. The broth is very good and rich. The fat of the bird being orange-coloured, like that of the Great White Curlew, gives it a very agreeable and rich appearance.” The Doctor also observes, “The body appears _depressed, not compressed as the Ardeæ_.” (MSS.) BLACK-BILLED WHISTLING DUCK.[123] _Dendrocygna arborea._ _Anas arborea_, +Linn.+—Pl. enl. 804. _Dendrocygna arborea_, +Sw.+ [123] Length 21 inches, expanse 39, flexure 10, tail 3¹⁄₄, rictus 2¹⁄₄, tarsus 3¹⁄₄, middle toe 2³⁄₄. Intestine 54 inches, two cæca, about 4 inches long. Irides dark brown; beak and feet iron-grey. Sexes exactly alike. The Whistling Duck is well known in Jamaica, by the singular note which has conferred on it its provincial name. This note uttered in its crepuscular flights to and from its feeding-places, and also when alarmed, is peculiarly shrill, and bears no small resemblance to the sound produced by blowing forcibly over the pipe of a drawer-key.