Lo designa como: “Fish Hawks, called Guincho by the creoles, arrive in September in Cuba, and usually remain but a short time. A few stay through the winter, and a few undoubtedly breed. Gundlach saw one in summer near Cardenas, and Gosse reports that there are occasional nests found in Jamaica. I never have seen many Guinchos about either the coasts or the inland waters. The lighthouse keeper at Cabo Cruz told me that a pair nested near there annually, and I saw two Fish Hawks near the light in April, 1914. I have seen them along the Rio Cauto and about Cienfuegos Bay, and during the spring of 1915 Brooks and I collected a pair, evidently mated, at the Ensenada de Cochinos. We saved only one, however. Its fellow fell victim to the vicissitudes of Latin-American collecting. We were asleep in the back room of a tiny and very dingy country store; our day's booty was hung from the clothes-line outdoors, as we had come in late and tired and the night was cool. About midnight a strolling party of revolutionists came in to help themselves from the store,- and this they did with a will,and then one spied our clothes-line. In a moment he had it cut down, the birds shaken off to the waiting pigs, and, as we were inside conversing discretely with the leader of the crew, we knew nothing of our sad loss until the pack had left. This, the revolution of the spring of 1917, brought us various woes, and the government mobilizados (volunteers) and the revolutionary alzados (patriots!) were about equally troublesome to the itinerant naturalist.” |
