The above notes in some degree arranged, and slightly abridged, I quote
from Robinson’s valuable MSS., who was evidently much interested in
the bird he has so minutely described. That interest I myself felt
in no small degree, on reading his notes, as there appear manifest
indications of an intermediate link between the diurnal and nocturnal
Fissirostres. It was therefore with very much pleasure that I saw on
the 4th of last April, what I believe to have been the present species.
At Content, in St. Elizabeth, as evening approached, _after a little
rain_, swallows of three species were careering around the mountain:
the White bellied Swallow and the Palm Swift were numerous, and among
them was a very large black species, with a white collar, rather less
numerous, prodigiously rapid in flight. I vainly endeavoured to shoot
it. A fortnight afterwards, about half an hour before sunset, _after
rain_, the Piramidigs which first appeared were presently joined by
the great collared Swift, which careered with them in numbers. Again,
about 11 o’clock in the forenoon, in May, three of these birds swept
overhead, heavy rain already falling on the mountain, and beginning to
reach the spot where I was. My lad Sam, one day about noon, observed
as many as a dozen passing in a flock, in straight and rapid course,
when black clouds, already gathered round the mountain brow, threatened
rain, which however passed away to leeward. A few days after, a little
earlier in the day, and _in exactly similar_ weather, or rather amidst
the first large drops of a heavy rainstorm, he saw three flying so low
as nearly to skim the ground; two pursuing in mazy course a third, from
which proceeded, now and then, a singular vibratory sound, which Sam
imitated by the word “churr.” This singular sound, which again reminds
one of the Goatsuckers, was also uttered by two, which, about the same
season and hour, and in similar weather, were careering swiftly over
Bluefields towards the mountain peaks.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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