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THE. CO.B.R 'olurne IX ]?overnber-Decern]oer 1907 WHITE-THROATED SWIFTS AT CAPISTRANO By FLORENCE MERRIAM BAILEY HE only swifts we had seen during a month's field work in California had been in the San Jacinto Mountains where, as usual, the birds were circling among high cliffs; but when, toward the middle of July we reached Capis- trano, in passing the ruins of the famous mission to which our eyes turned invol- untarily, our steps were arrested and we exclaimed in amazement, for circling about over'the interesting old walls, mixed in among a large flock of eave swallows were a few White-throated Swifts (Aeronautes melanoleucus). Tho few they were easily picked out from the nondescript swallows by their clean-cut cross-bow forms patched with white. Their wild, shrieked-out notes recalled canyons walled with rock in the depths of the mountains and we marvelled that the birds should stop even in passing at such a place as this. For altho the mission is a ruin, part of it is still in use and the old green mission bells still clang loudly when the priest comes; moreover, while surrounded by a sleepy Mexican village the mission stands on the automobile highway between Los Angeles and San Diego over which whizzing touring cars toot at all hours, and still worse, twenty rods away the Santa Fe trains whistle and puff and rumble over their tracks. As we watched the Eave Swallows (Petroc,?ef- idon lunifrons) whose nests line many of the mission arches we wondered if the presence of their large colony had not given encouragement to the swifts, had not made it easier for this little band of cliff dwellers to decide to take up their abode among men. That they had taken up their abode in the Mission of course remained to be proved, but the old ruin suddenly took on new interest--tell it, or not, to the archeologist--and was explored with one eye to the dim historic past and one eye to the vivid, living, ornithological present. To think of having White-throated Swifts in a building--even a ruined one--where you could watch them close at hand! The nearest approach my lucky star had previously youthsareal had been at the foot of the sandstone cliffs of Acoma where, high overhead, belittled black figures had been seen squeezing into cracks in the rock.