after eating or preening and fluffing their feathers. To fluff their head feathers, they will shake their head back and forth in a fast, jerky movement. Todies also preen their feathers with their flat bills and this mainly occurs in their breast and wing areas on their body. Breeding The Jamaican tody is a relatively quiet bird during the non-breeding season. However during the breeding season, they perform increased wing-rattling for both courtship and to show other todies that this is their territory. Courtship feeding has also been observed in the Jamaican tody where a dead insect is exchanged between two partners. In one observation of Jamaican tody copulation, the male chased the female a short distance and once she landed, he swooped down on her and held her crown while performing 29 cloacal contacts in the span of 35 seconds. Soon after, throat-rattles were heard and the two todies flew away in separate directions. Jamaican todies can sometimes be found digging, in which they mainly use their rhamphotheca to create a nesting site. Their eggs are laid in unlined chambers near the end of their burrows, which are holes created in the soil on top of the hard, limestone habitats. The eggs are round, shiny and white, except when they are freshly laid and have a pinkish tint to them. They lay between 1 and 4 white eggs during their breeding season which lasts from December to July. The average size of a Jamaican tody egg is about 16.1 mm long and 13.3 mm wide. One egg is laid each night until the clutch is finished, and then eggs are incubated between 21 and 22 days before hatching asynchronously. Once the young emerge from the shell, the eggs are left in the chamber. While the burrows are generally occupied by todies, other species can sometimes be found inhabiting their homes such as spiders, field mice and lizards. Food and feeding The Jamaican tody uses a sit-and-watch foraging strategy to capture its prey, which is similar to other todies in the genus Todus that can be found on nearby islands in the West Indies. They nearly entirely feed on insects and the larvae of insects but will occasionally eat fruit as well. The majority of their foraging is done below nine-tenths of the maximum canopy height of the forest, and is done in both dry and wet forests. From a