lO 
THE CONDOR 
Voi„ VI 
The red-billed tropic birds {Phaetho?i cethereiis) which nest on a few of the is- 
lands interested me greatly. Their flight and call as they wheeled and darted 
about the high cliffs closely resembled that of the white throated swifts in Califor- 
nia. On Daphne Island where they were common, several of their nests were in 
small caves in the sandstone cliff's, being quite similar to the nests of duck hawks 
in the islands along the Dower California coast. Usuall}^ they select some crevice 
among the loose rocks for a nest, altho on San Benedicto Island of the Revillagige- 
dos very often a burrow of the wedge-tailed shearwater is used. In this section of 
the world the tropic bird wanders as far away from land as the frigate bird. We 
found both this species and the red-tailed tropic bird more than 600 miles from 
any island. 
The flamingo is one of the birds that can be photographed at close range in the 
Galapagos but the day I discovered this fact, the camera was on shipboard and we 
had not time to return for it. It seems that the flight feathers of the flamingo are 
CALIFORNIA BROWN PELICAN ON NEST 
moulted all at once, for four of the birds obtained that day had not a single one of 
the old primaries in their wings and the new feathers were just starting. On a 
former occasion when I attempted to photograph a group of five birds my haste in 
trying to reach a favorable spot scared them, but as they rose twenty yards away 
I threw up the camera and pressed the bulb before the camera was steady. The 
resulting picture is ten long streaks where the legs dangled across the plate and a 
confused blur showing in place of the bodies. 
When one has to back away from a flock of teal to get a fair shot, and then 
cannot obtain it because the birds run along the beach and swim in the water to- 
ward him 5'ou have an idea of the tameness of the birds. When this happened to 
me the first time I was short of cartridges and wanted to get several birds at a 
shot, but when the whole flock started toward me both on land and water to see 
what strange thing was approaching I concluded we could dispense with ducks 
for that day and left them as unafraid as before. Often after that on approaching 
