214 ; THE CONDOR Vol. XXIV 
a fairly comfortable position with the intention of observing the bird’s actions as care- 
fully as possible. I could see his feet distinctly and his toes seemed to curl around 
and grasp the wire in the same way as those of a perching bird. He was standing 
almost erect and teetering a good deal in an effort to find his balance. Several times 
the pelican tried to stoop to a sitting posture but with very unsettling results. Once 
while trying to preen his breast feathers he almost fell over backward and had to flap 
his wings vigorously to get balanced again. Finally he became satisfied with the erect 
posture and remained in it for probably ten minutes. In the erect posture for a time 
his balancing movements were so nearly imperceptible at one hundred feet distance 
that I would not have been able to detect them if I had not had the advantage of a se- 
ries of cross wires on a gate within about thirty feet of the bird. By use of these 
wires I was able to estimate that at best there was rhythmic movement of the head up 
and down through a distance of at least a half inch, varied every few seconds by a 
longer swing of two to three inches. 
Just before this relatively stable period he had lifted first one foot and then the 
other several times as though the wire hurt his feet. Indeed, this performance re- 
minded me very much of a barefoot boy trying to stand on a hot pavement. At the 
end of the quiet period the pelican began side-stepping and walked on the wire a dis- 
tance of about four feet at the end of which he turned around facing in the opposite 
direction. In making the turn he got a good deal unbalanced and saved himself from 
falling by stepping onto the wooden rail with one foot. He again assumed the erect 
position and remained thus for some little time until excited by the screeching of a 
flock of gulls which flew near him. At 8:15 he flew away after having perched cn the 
small wire for twenty-three minutes. 
When first alighting he had been facing the pier and away from the water. The 
half turn made after the side-stepping performance brought him into a position facing 
the water. Before beginning the side-stepping he had made several efforts to stoop, 
with very strong appearance of getting ready to fly. Every effort to stoop destroyed 
his balance and he could not get a good jump into the air for starting flight. I do not 
think it possible that he could have gotten enough jump to enable him to clear the op- 
posite rail. Whatever the actual reason for the half turn it certainly put him into po- 
sition (facing the water) to launch easily into flight. 
I have mentioned a failure to keep balance while attempting to preen. There 
were two or three fairly successful attempts but they were confined to very small ad- 
justments of breast feathers with very brief action. At various times in the perching 
period the head was rotated from side to side but this did not involve much shifting in 
weight and was not very disturbing to balance. 
The three cases which I have seen indicate that pelicans do have perching ambi- 
tions and that they can make a very creditable showing in a difficult situation. Do such 
performances indicate vestigial or initiatory tendencies in behavior?—W. E. ALLEN, 
Scripps Institution for Biological Research of the University of California, La Jolla, 
September 20, 1922. 
EDITORIAL NOTES AND NEWS 
The editors of THE CoNpDoR are once more 
indebted to Mr. J. R. Pemberton for assist- 
anee. The annual index concluding our 
present volume was in large measure pre- 
pared by him. 
Volume II, numbers 3-4 (in one), of Daw- 
son’s “Journal of the Museum of Compara- 
tive Oology” (Santa Barbara) reached our 
desk on October 31. A very important new 
nesting record for California is that, by 
Mr. W. L. Dawson, of the Yellow Rail in 
Mono County. Mr. A. B. Howell contributes 
an article on “The Ethics of Collecting” 
which is fraught with sound sense; the 
principles set forth ought to be followed 
conscientiously by all collectors, and then — 
there would be far less of criticism levied 
at the fraternity than is, unfortunately, now 
the case. The greater part of this issue of 
the “Journal’ is occupied by accounts of 
nest-hunting, chiefly with the Sierra Ne- 
vada Rosy Finch as the objective, and with 
the human-interest element emphasized 
rather than the ornithological. 
