52 BIRDS OF THE PAP AGO SAGUARO NATIONAL MONUMENT. 



from perch to perch begging for food until I expected to see them chastised. 

 The pair in question stayed with the three juvenals until they had them broken 

 to eat for themselves and then left. After a proper interval they came back 

 with two more young ones, thus indicating that a second brood is sometimes 

 raised. The abundant supply of food may have been a determining factor in 

 the number of broods raised. 



The Gila woodpecker is so prone to adapt himself to different kinds of food 

 that he seems fitted to persist in the face of settlement and civilization. Lack of 

 suitable nesting sites might be thought to prove a stumbling block, but any 

 old stump appears to answer, no matter whether high or low, so that difficulty 

 might be surmounted. He might prove a pest to certain fruits if present in 

 sufficient numbers, but that danger is remote, though I have known several to 

 suffer through too much devotion to the succulent peach and pear. 1 



FARALION" CORMORANT. 

 Phalacrocorax auritus albociliatus Ridgway. 



Recognition marks. Coloration of adults, black; of young birds, 

 brownish, with lighter colored breast. Size of a small goose (about 

 3 feet in length) ; and goose-like in general appearance when flying, 

 though with a quirk in the outstretched neck, whereas a flying goose 

 extends its neck to its full length. When swimming the body is sunk 

 low in the water and the bill pointed obliquely upward. 



Occurrence. When the waters of Roosevelt Lake rose to their ap- 

 pointed level, flooding so many miles of bottomlands of the Salt and 

 Tonto Rivers, there was at least one species of bird that was able to 

 move into the altered country and find conditions to its liking. Cor- 

 morants probably occurred sporadically along the rivers before the 

 lake existed, but it is doubtful if these streams supplied sufficient food 

 or if there were proper nesting sites to permit the establishment of 

 breeding colonies. At each end of Roosevelt Lake that is, just below 

 the mouths of the Tonto and Salt Rivers stand cottonwood and other 

 trees, killed by the rising flood, partly submerged but with their tops 

 out of the water. In some of the larger of these trees the cormorants 

 have built their nests. On June 8 I visited the colony at the head of 

 the Tonto River branch of the lake. Great blue herons and black- 

 crowned night herons were there, as well as the cormorants, and it 

 was not always possible to tell to which birds the nests observed per- 

 tained, though as a rule the three species seemed to nest in colonies 

 apart. The cormorants were in greater numbers than the herons. 

 One tree held 16 nests, most of them occupied by partly grown young 

 cormorants. Near-by were two other trees holding, respectively, three 

 and four nests, and farther on a number of single nests were scattered, 

 some cormorants' and some herons'. Besides the cormorants on the 

 nests, single birds and flocks of three or four were seen at various 

 points near the head of the lake. Altogether about 40 or 50 of the 



^ Condor, XVII, 1915, pp. 152-159. 



