I happened to wound slightly two of these birds on the same day, which
I placed in a cage. They were free and easy from the first, very
clamorous, lively and even headlong in their sudden movements. I found
that they would seize and devour with eagerness cockroaches, hard
beetles, worms, and even small lizards. I gave them a bunch of the
ripe, but dry and insipid, berries of a species of _ficus_, which they
readily picked off and ate. The fruit of this fig they are fond of in
a state of freedom; and such is their impudence that they prevent the
Baldpate Pigeons, though so much bigger, from partaking. The Baldpates
would willingly eat the little figs also, but the Hopping Dicks scream
and fly at them, and peck their backs, so as to keep them fluttering
from branch to branch, reluctant to depart, yet unable to eat in
comfort.
At the break of day, if we pass along a wooded mountain road, such as
that lonely one at Basin-spring, in Westmoreland, particularly when the
parching winds called _norths_ have set in, in December and January,—we
see the Hopping Dicks bounding singly along the ground in every part;
but during the day they resort in numbers to the diminished springs and
ponds which yet remain, where, after quenching their thirst, they enjoy
the luxury of a bathe.
In the high mountains behind Spanish Town, this bird is called the
Twopenny chick; but in the parishes of Westmoreland and St. Elizabeth,
I have heard him distinguished only by the homely appellation which
I have adopted. He is not confined to any particular locality. Dr.
Chamberlaine (_Jam. Alm._) has “never seen him in the lowlands.” But
around Bluefields he is abundant, especially in the little belt of wood
that girds the sandy sea-beach at Belmont, where one may meet with him
at all times. In the pastures of Mount Edgecumbe he is no less common.
In the highest districts, as Bluefields Peaks, though I have sometimes
seen him, he is chiefly represented by his congener, the Glass-eye:
in the solitudes of Basin-spring, a lower elevation, both species are
numerous.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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