Undertail coverts and the tips of the outer tail feathers were also coloured white.

It consisted of swamps and mangroves with poisonous manchineel trees (Hippomane mancinella) as well as of areas with knife-edged coral rocks and the climbing cactus (Epiphyllum hookeri).

Charles B. Cory described them as common in 1886 but shortly after its discovery, it became a favorite object for bird collectors.

Finally, thirteen specimens were shot between April and July 1916 by bird collector W. W. Brown, Jr.

Afterward this bird vanished and several surveys to find this species again failed, until zoologist C. Bernard Lewis observed one individual north of East End in the eastern of Grand Cayman in the summer of 1938.