A Voyage to New Holland by William Dampier
page 62 of 124 (50%)
page 62 of 124 (50%)
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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. |
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