304 BULLETIN 17 6, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



ber 3; Errington, September 15; Okanagan Landing, September 15. 

 Idaho — Priest Kiver, September 10; Trestle Creek, September 11. 

 Washington — Mount Rainier National Park, September 16; Seattle, 

 September 25; Tacoma, October 1. California — Nicasio, September 

 24 ; Buena Park, September 24 ; Santa Cruz, October 5 ; Los Angeles, 

 October 14. Arizona — Tombstone, September 20; Pima Indian Res- 

 ervation, September 26 ; Santa Catalina Mountains, October 6. 



Casual records. — Two individuals were recorded in Jasper National 

 Park, Alberta, on July 6, 1918. The British Museum (Natural His- 

 tory) has two specimens taken in Costa Rica, one at Los Cuadros de 

 Laguna, in July 1898, and the other at Carrillo on November 7, 1898. 

 This institution also lists a specimen from Honduras without exact 

 locality or date of collection, but it seems probable that all three of 

 these examples may be referable to the form resident in southern 

 Central America. 



Egg dates. — California: 44 records. May 7 to July 9; 22 records, 

 June 12 to 30, indicating the height of the season. 



MICROPUS PACIFICUS PACIFICUS (Latham) 



WHITE-RUMPED SWIFT 



Contributed by Francis Charles Robert Joxirdain 



HABITS 



The first and, up to the present, only record of this species within 

 our limits is that of a female that was obtained on St. George Island, 

 Alaska, on August 1, 1920. It was observed flying over the tundra 

 and along the cliffs by G. D. Hanna and was recorded by Mailliard 

 and Hanna (1921). 



Like most of the swifts, this is a bird of extremely powerful flight 

 and has an enormous range, breeding in eastern Siberia west to the 

 Altai range and east to the Pacific, as well as in the Japanese and 

 other island groups of the northwest Pacific Ocean. Southward its 

 breeding range extends to the northwest Himalayas, where it is rep- 

 resented by a local race, Micropus paci-ficus leuconyx., and to Burma, 

 where another form is found nesting, M. p. cooM. In all probability 

 these two races are resident, or at any rate do not migrate far, and 

 have not been proved to leave the Asiatic Continent. The typical 

 race, with which we are concerned, on the other hand migrates by way 

 of the Malay Archipelago to Australia. 



The white-rumped swift was first described by Latham in 1801 

 under the name of Hirundo paci-fica^ not from the bird but from the 

 celebrated Watling drawings, which were executed in Australia (New 

 South Wales). Nothing was known at that time as to its breeding 



