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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