The People Factory by Grant Iain M

Author:Grant, Iain M [Grant, Iain M]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pigeon Park Press
Published: 2016-07-16T00:00:00+00:00

Three Birds of Saint-Cyr

The Proprietor Amazon

The Proprietor Amazon is a small blue-green parrot endemic to the island of Saint-Cyr. It can be easily distinguished from similar birds, such as the Cuban Parrot and Hispaniola Amazon, by the hood of bright azure feathers on its head and face. These birds live in densely forested regions and make their nests in the hollows of rotting trees. They are unusually gregarious for parrots, living in social groups of up to twenty individuals.

Though it is a cautious creature, the Proprietor Amazon is both inquisitive and extremely noisy. They chatter incessantly whilst eating. In the forest their diet consists mainly of seeds, nuts, berries and flowers but they have adapted to take advantage of the fruit and maize plantations that are dotted about their island home and it is this penchant for thievery that has given them their name and caused them to be reviled in local folk tradition.

In the eighteenth century, on each plantation, there would be at least one slave whose job it was to scare off these opportunist scavengers. If a bird was spotted, up would go a cry of ‘Yoto-toto’ which was both an imitation of the parrot’s cry and of the language of the French slavers (which was an alien mumbo-jumbo to many of the African-born slaves). In popular imagination, the amazon and the slave-drivers were one, taking the fruits of the land from those who had worked to produce it. And so the bird became known as the propriétaire foncier, or landowner bird.

Habitat destruction and the introduction of Martlesham’s Jay to Saint-Cyr have since caused the Proprietor Amazon to retreat from many areas and to rapidly dwindle in number. Yet, even more than a hundred and fifty years after the emancipation of the Saint-Cyr slaves, this is seen by many islanders as a good thing.

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