CHAPTER 6 



Birds of the Region 1 



In the immediate vicinity of the cave entrance, there 

 is no surface water except for a brief time after a rain 

 in rock pools. Even our drinking water was packed on 

 a burro over the limestone ridge from a spring in another 

 canyon a mile away. But to reach the cave from the 

 railroad one must come in from the Pecos River some 

 twenty miles to the east, or across the Black River two 

 or three miles to the south, where permanent water 

 attracts many forms of swimming and wading birds, 

 and the mild climate keeps some of them there through 

 much of the winter season. During spring and fall 

 migrations the Pecos River teems with wild geese, swans, 

 ducks, coots, grebes, cranes, herons, and a great variety 

 and abundance of wading birds, — curlews, avocets, 

 black-necked stilts, willets, yellowlegs, snipe, sand- 

 pipers, plovers, and phalaropes. An occasional cormo- 

 rant or anhinga comes up the river from farther south. 



Of the migratory land birds great flocks of black- 



1 This brief list of the birds of the Carlsbad Cave region, far from 

 complete, merely mentions some of the more interesting of those 

 observed during a stay at the cave from March 11 to May 10, 1924, 

 and on several previous visits by Mrs. Bailey and myself to Carlsbad 

 and the Guadalupe Mountains. Notes on the wintering of water 

 birds have been contributed by Carl Livingston, of Carlsbad, who has 

 spent many years in the valley, but no attempt has been made to use 

 all the information at hand. The notes are for the purpose of show- 

 ing the unusually interesting nature of the bird fauna of the National 

 Monument under which the cave region is being preserved for study. 



130 



