Which concerns the birds native to this island which are similar to those in our Spain.

Translated by Yuming Ren ’21

There are many wood pigeons in this island of Haiti or Hispaniola, and consequently stock doves are also found here (but both smaller than those of the same species found in Spain). There are also very good turtledoves, of three or four types, and some are larger than others. There are swallows, bigger than those in Spain, but their heads and necks are not blond, nor are their tails as sharply split, and their song is more muted and not quite like the song of the swallows in our Spain, nor do they nest so domestically in the houses; it must be because it has been a short time since they have set up stone houses here. Despite this, they have already started to nest in the city’s largest church and in the monasteries of Dominican friars as well. There are also large numbers of swifts; royal herons; night herons; falcons; very good peregrine falcons, somewhat blacker than those in Spain and Italy; big and very beautiful seahawks; small eagles. There are also guaraguaos or red-tailed hawks, which do not exist in Spain, but I include them here because they are of the condition and behavior of kites, only insofar as their practice of stealing chickens, because they are not similar in plumage, the division of the tail, or the shape of the head. But they are well armed, and the plumage of these guaraguaos or red-tailed hawks is like that of the lanner falcon, except that these hawks have red eyes. There are barn owls; gannets of many types; white fish eagles or sea hawks (I say of the sea because they practice fishing); shrikes; seagulls; gulls (but few of them); common gallinules; kestrels; woodpeckers (of the size of our thrushes). These woodpeckers have a red nape and some red feathers on top of the tail, and all the rest of their body is spotted throughout with black and green, and the green tends somewhat to yellow. These birds make a hole with their beak in the palm trees and other trees, carving and hollowing out as much as they need to make their nests and dwellings. I do not know if this is the bird that in Spain we call pito, because I have heard that the pito nests this way as well. There are many fierce geese, and their passage through the islands is in December. There are many birds here like those that in Spain live in the groves (whose names they don’t know here), and they sing well; and there are also nightingales, whose songs are a thing to hear and of a very sweet melody, although their songs are not as varied as those of Spain. There are innumerable cormorants, and there are merlins of all sorts. There are aberramias [a species of duck], but those of these Indies have red plumage and a shorter beak than those of Castile. All the birds I have mentioned in this chapter are native to this island as well as to Spain, and all of them and many others are found on these islands and the Mainland.