s with these birds. And the
Portuguese care not to let them have any of these birds, to keep them
from that superstition: as I found one afternoon when I was in the fields
with a padre and another, who shot two of them, and hid them, as they
said, for that reason. They are not good food, but their bills are
reckoned a good antidote against poison.

The bill-birds are so called by the English from their monstrous bills,
which are as big as their bodies. I saw none of these birds here, but saw
several of the breasts flayed off and dried for the beauty of them; the
feathers were curiously coloured with red, yellow, and orange-colour.

The curresos (called here mackeraws) are such as are in the Bay of
Campeachy.

Turtledoves are in great plenty here; and two sorts of wild pigeons; the
one sort blackish, the other a light grey: the blackish or dark grey are
the bigger, being as large as our wood-quests, or wood-pigeons in
England. Both sorts are very good meat; and are in such plenty from May
till September that a man may shoot 8 or 10 dozen in several shots at one
standing, in a close misty morning, when they come to feed on berries
that grow in the woods.

The jenetee is a bird as big as a lark with black feathers, and yellow
legs and feet. It is accounted very wholesome food.

CLOCKING-HEN, CRAB-CATCHER, GALDEN, AND BLACK HERON: THE DUCKS, WIDGEON
AND TEAL; AND OSTRICHES TO THE SOUTHWARD, AND OF THE DUNGHILL-FOWLS.

Clocking-hens are much like the crab-catchers which I have described, but
the legs are not altogether so long. They keep always in swampy wet
places, though their claws are like land-fowls' claws. They make a noise
or cluck like our brood-hens, or dunghill-hens, when they have chickens,
and for that reason they are called by the English clocking-hens. There
are many of them in the Bay of Campeachy (though I omitted to speak of
them there) and elsewhere in the West Indies. There are both here and
there four sorts of these long-legged fowls, near akin to each other as
so many sub-species of the same kind; namely crab-catchers,
clocking-hens, galdens (which three are in shape and colour like herons
in England, but less; the galden, the biggest of the three, the
crab-catcher the smallest) and a fourth sort which are black, but shaped
like the other, having long legs and short tails; these are about the
bigness of crab-catchers, and feed as they do.

Currecoos are waterfowls, as big as pretty large chickens,