PICARIAE CYPSELIDAE PASYPTILA SAXATILIS. 371 



1874, 47. YARROW & HENSHAW, Rep. Orn. Specs., 1872, Wheeler's Exped., 

 1874, 23. HENSHAW, Kep. Orn. Specs., 1873, Wheeler's Exped:, 1874, 129. 

 COUES, Birds Northwest, 1874, 265. 



ranyptila mehniohvca, ED., Birds N. A., 1858, 141. HEERM., P. R. R. Rep., Parke's 

 Route, x, 1859, 10. KENNERLY, P. R. R. Rep., W hippie's Route, x, 1859, 

 23, pi. xviii, f. 1. HEERM., P. R. R. Rep.,x, pt. ii, 1859, 35. COOPER, Proc. 

 Cal. Acad., 1861, 122 (Southern California). COUES, Proe. Acad. Nat. Sci. 

 Phila., 1866, 57. COOPER, Birds Cal., i, 1870, 347. ALLEN, Bui. Mus. 

 Comp. Zool., 1872, 180 (Colorado). AlKEN, Proc. Bost. Soc. Nat. Hist., xv, 

 1872, 206. BD., BREW., & RIDG., N. A. Birds, ii, 1874, 424, pi. 45, f. 5. 



As remarked by Dr. Coues, there can be no reasonable doubt that 

 in this swift we have the bird described by Dr. Woodhouse from individuals 

 seen by him at Inscription Rock, N. Mex., in 1 854. Visiting this place in 

 1873, I still found that the faces of the cliffs, broken and seamed in every 

 direction, afforded shelter for many pairs of these birds, who were flying 

 backward and forward, and at short intervals entering into the rifts, and 

 in a moment re- appearing, having borne to their young, whose faint cries 

 were now and then audible, the insects, in quest of which they were skim- 

 ming the air. To understand the mistake made by Dr. Woodhouse in 

 describing the bird as possessed of a white rump, one need only place him- 

 self at an elevation where he can look, down upon the bird as it courses the 

 air below, or nearly on a level with himself, when he will instantly perceive 

 what appears to be a continuous white patch across the rump, but which in 

 reality is merely due to the apparent overlapping of the conspicuous white 

 flank-tufts, which, as stated by Dr. Coues, "nearly or quite meet across the 

 rump." The bird is an abundant inhabitant of Utah, Colorado, New Mex- 

 ico, and Arizona, but its persistent adherence to the neighborhood of rocky 

 cliffs, where it alone finds nesting sites, renders it extremely local, while its 

 habit of flying high in the air, it very rarely descending into the valleys 

 and canons, and the extreme velocity of its flight, combine to make it a 

 species of great rarity in museums, despite of its abundance. Though 

 I have on several occasions found colonies breeding in the faces of cliffs, 

 the inaccessibility of the crevices they had chosen for their retreats has 

 always proved an insurmountable obstacle to any attempt to spy out their 

 domestic arrangements. 



