The Cockpit Country of Jamaica: An Island Within an Island

2009 ◽  
pp. 69-77 ◽  
Author(s):  
Parris Lyew-Ayee
Keyword(s):  
Cockpit Country

Living and late Holocene fossil vertebrates, and the vegetation of the cockpit country, Jamaica

1991 ◽  
Vol 353 ◽  
pp. 1-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregory K. Pregill ◽  
Ronald I. Crombie ◽  
David W. Steadman ◽  
Linda K. Gordon ◽  
Frank W. Davis ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Late Holocene ◽  
Cockpit Country

scholarly journals Historical decline and probable extinction of the Jamaican Golden SwallowTachycineta euchrysea euchrysea

2013 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 239-251 ◽  
Author(s):  
GARY R. GRAVES
Keyword(s):  
Conservation Status ◽  
Population Decline ◽  
Rattus Rattus ◽  
Small Region ◽  
The Past ◽  
Black Rat ◽  
Mammalian Predators ◽  
Aerial Insectivores ◽  
Cockpit Country ◽  
Strong Concern

SummaryThe endemic Jamaican subspecies of the Golden SwallowTachycineta euchrysea euchryseahas been rare and locally distributed since its discovery in 1847. By the 1950s, its geographic range had contracted to a small region along the northern frontier of Cockpit Country. The last unequivocal sight records occurred in the early 1980s, raising strong concern about the swallow’s conservation status. I conducted an island-wide search for the swallow from 1994 through 2012. Standardised censuses of aerial insectivores at 1,281 sites, including the last redoubts of the Golden Swallow in Trelawny Parish, revealed no evidence of the species. These surveys and the absence of documented sight records during the past three decades suggest that the Jamaican race of the Golden Swallow is close to extinction if not already extinct. The cause of the population decline is unknown but is most likely linked to chronic predation by introduced mammalian predators, particularly the arboreal black ratRattus rattus.

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