BIRDS OF THE REGION 149 



rounded wings to another resting spot. But their 

 unmistakable note is one of the delightful, soft, plain- 

 tive sounds of the night, adding a rare charm to camp 

 life on these wide stretches of open country. 



White-throated swifts are often seen hustling over the 

 cave entrance, their white, V-shaped throat markings 

 conspicuous against the black body, rendering them 

 unmistakable, as do also their Hghtning-hke speed and 

 strident notes. In the Bighorn Cave in Slaughter 

 Canyon, some fifteen miles directly west from the 

 Carlsbad Cave, a colony of these swifts has long nested 

 in a great crack in the roof, some seventy-five feet 

 above the floor. This is an old breeding ground, as 

 shown by about a ton of guano and a bushel of swift 

 feathers on the ground underneath, and the fact that 

 some years ago three carloads of swift guano were 

 taken out, packed down the trail on burros, and shipped 

 to California as fertilizer. On April 30, 1924, about a 

 dozen of the swifts were seen, circling in and out of the 

 cave, entering and leaving the breeding crevice, but 

 these were doubtless only the early arrivals from farther 

 south. Owls and ring-tails had evidently preyed upon 

 them extensively, judging by the bones in the owl 

 pellets and the great numbers of wing feathers, with 

 quills clearly cut by the teeth of some carnivore. Both 

 of these enemies were common in the cave. 



Hummingbirds began to appear in the canyons on 

 March 29, and were common about the flowers of the 

 Mexican madrone tree, the goat-bean bush and the 

 Mexican buckeye, and later about other flowers as 

 they appeared. The black-chinned was the first to 



