The White-throated Swift 
of struggling insects, but I should rather suppose that they are in the 
nature of a wind-shield, ready-made goggles for this heavenly chauffeur. 
In the selection of nesting sites these birds exhibit an almost pre¬ 
ternatural cunning. Not only do they choose sheer walls or undercut 
niches, but those which, because of the fissures so afforded, are crumbling 
and dangerous to a degree. A small colony of these birds nests within 
a mile and a half of our museum 
at “Los Colibris.” Yet for 
all the good they have 
done the collection, 
they might as 
3 
Taken in Kern County Photo by the Author 
THE FLUTED BASTIONS OF RED-ROCK 
A NESTING HAUNT OF THE 
WHITE-THROATED SWIFT 
well be nesting in Tibet. As an index of the variety and difficulty which 
Swift-nesting affords, a detailed account of the quest of the season of 
1913 may be worth while. 
On the 3rd of May, son William (aet. 13) and the writer, loaded 
down with fathoms of rope, reconnoiter the sandstone cliff which juts 
out of the dense chaparral a mile or so up Mission Creek near Santa 
Barbara. The wall is more than a hundred feet high, and a great niche, 
overhung to a depth of twelve or fifteen feet, occupies the upper reaches. 
The lip of the cliff above this niche is deeply cleft, and here we see Swifts 
appearing and disappearing from time to time. The frontal aspect 
of this cliff is quite forbidding, and its flanks are guarded by chaparral, 
whose disciplinary values we have no mind to test. Fortunately, the 
face of the cliff is crossed by a narrow ledge. The devious course of 
this half hypothetical ladder is marked now and then by moss and ferns, 
a tiny live oak sapling, or a gnarled bunch of ceanothus. Every few 
yards a tiny sandstone cave offers repose, and the view of the wooded 
964 
