I got to thinking the other day as I was conducting a hike that my audience didn’t know why the Yellow Breast became our territory bird. Nor did they know that we had native parrots, very large birds, but they are now extinct.
The Yellow Breast (Coereba flaveola) is called by many common names such as Bananaquit, Sugar Bird, etc., in the Virgin Islands. But why did we choose the Yellow Breast as our territory bird?
Believe me, St. Croix was not called the “Garden Spot of the West Indies or the Caribbean” or “The Garden Spot of the Antilles” for nothing due to it sugar history. A book titled “Stick From the Hawk Nest,” by our beloved late native naturalist George A. Seaman, mentions this about our territory bird: “In our case, the Yellow Breast was chosen because of its ubiquitous distribution, cheery and friendly disposition, and above all because of its historic association with the sugar economy of the Virgin Islands.”
Therefore, one can say from the first primitive animal mill in the colonial era of the Virgin Islands to when Estate Bethlehem Sugar Factory on St. Croix phased out sugar production in 1966, the Yellow Breast was part of the sugar industry of these islands. These birds used to fly into the sugar factories in the hundreds and eat the sugar. The bird got its name, like I mentioned before, by constantly entering the sugar factories, particularly the curing-houses at different sugar estates through the barred windows.
The managers and overseers of estates on St. Croix gave the birds a bad reputation for stealing sugar from the hogsheads. However, older Crucians believed it was the swarms of flies that attracted the Yellow Breast, which led them to the newly made muscovado. The birds were such a part of the Virgin Islands culture and history. It is for this reason one of the common names was Sugar Bird. They love sugar. On the other hand, the word Bananaquit derived from its yellow color and the English word quit, which refers to any bird of the order Passeriformes, which includes more than half of all bird species.
Nonetheless, the Yellow Breast has been identified with the making of sugar in the Virgin Islands. The bird is recognized by its short, strongly curved bill, black above with a dark gray throat, and bright yellow belly, thus the common name Yellow Breast. Other distinctive features include white eye stripes extending from the nostril to the nape.
Believe me, these birds are bold, noisy, and acrobatic. They are constantly in motion, flitting their wings as they feed in forests on flower nectar, insects, fruits, and spiders. They also are attracted to gardens and patios if you have sugar water feeders for them. At times, they might just invite themselves to the family sugar bowl in your house. By the way, they love to sing. Their singing has been described as “zee-e-e swees se tee.”
On May 6, 1970, the Virgin Islands Legislature passed Bill No. 4263 naming the Yellow Breast as our official bird. Now, what about our native parrot of the Virgin Islands? The Brown-Throated Parakeet, known on St. Thomas’ northwest side, particularly the Magens Bay area, is endemic to the U.S. Virgin Islands, also to some French West Indies Islands, and other countries in Central and South America. They are also known as St. Thomas Conure or Brown-Throated Conure.
However, the parrot that I am talking about is distinguished and only found on St. Croix. In the 1730s, Reimert Haagensen, a Danish planter of St. Croix, mentioned in his book, “Description of the Island of St. Croix in America in the West Indies,” parrots on St. Croix. In the countryside, Haagensen mentioned you can find both blue doves, the scaly-naped pigeon (Columba squamosa), and the Puerto Rican parrot (Amazona vittate).
“There are many parrots on the island. They are green in color and their nests are found in the forests by slaves, who sell them for two to three marks apiece. It is an easy matter to teach them to talk. Through found quite commonly on the island, they would be worth 100 Rdlr here,” noted Haagensen. Haagensen talked about when the grain ripened in the fields, how parrots appeared in large flocks to eat the grain. To protect the grain, managers and overseers of estates on St. Croix had enslaved Africans posted in the fields to save their corn crops from being eating by parrots.
Slaves in the grain fields on estates were armed with fowling pieces to keep the parrots away. This would continue daily until the crop was harvested from the fields. It is interesting to note that both the Yellow Breast and the parrots had a bad reputation of stealing sugar or eating grain crops. The sad note is that our native parrots became extinct due to extensive deforestation on St. Croix, especially old-growth forests, and the clearing of thousands of acres for agriculture, thus destroying habitats, particularly in the countryside of the island.
These native parrots were probably mostly green as Haagensen described them, although they could have a red band above their beak and blue on their head and wings. They might also have featherless rings around their eyes or white rings around their eyes. They could have been about 12 inches long, which is about the size of the parrot in Puerto Rico. The St. Croix parrot could have been a subspecies or related species to the Puerto Rican parrot.
The Puerto Rican parrot is now rare and an endangered species due to many factors, mainly human impact on the forest habitat of the island. According to historians, the island supported a parrot population of about 100,000 to 1 million at the end of the 15th century. In 1968, there were only two dozen individual birds in the wild. By 1994, the population of the parrot had risen to 36 birds and six breeding pairs.
Believe me, it is a struggle for scientists to increase the population of parrots in Puerto Rico. There is a lesson in all of this: protect the natural and cultural resources for a healthy economy of these islands.
— Olasee Davis is a bush professor who lectures and writes about the culture, history, ecology and environment of the Virgin Islands when he is not leading hiking tours of the wild places and spaces of St. Croix and beyond.
