Mar., 1914 
FROM FIELD AND STUDY 
95 
The Undying Error.— No more typical example of the persistence of error could 
be selected than that furnished by the publication and subsequent citation of the alleged 
nesting of the Black Cloud Swift {Cypseloides niger borealis) at Seattle. An ardent 
amateur, Mr. Matt H. Gormley, a member of a now defunct organization then known as 
“The Young Naturalists”, found a bulky nest containing five white eggs in a warehouse on 
the Seattle waterfront, and reported it, with due pomp and circumstantiality, as the nest of 
the long-sought Black Swift. Appearing as it did in the venerated columns of the Auk 
(vol. V, 1888, pp. 424-425), the report met with ready acceptance and was copied far and 
wide. 
Of course those whose natures are tinged with a wholesome skepticism soon made 
out that the nest in question belonged, not to the dashing tyrant of the skies, but to the 
more prosaic Purple Martin {Progne subis). So far as its author was concerned the mis- 
take, albeit somewhat jejune, was a not altogether unnatural one, because the Martin as a 
resident of Washington was then very little known. Mr. Gormley at length discovered his 
own error and was so bored by it, and by the chaffing to which it subjected him, that the 
subject became tabu among his friends; but so far as known to the writer, he never took 
the trouble to make a public correction. 
Major Bendire correctly diagnosed the case, upon a visit to Seattle in May, 1894, 
and published his opinion in the authoritative “Life Histories” (vol. n, 1895, p. 177). Yet 
here w'e have it in Mrs. Bailey’s “Handbook of Birds of the Western United States” (Sec- 
ond Edition, Revised, 19(14, p. 229) : “Nest. — On cliffs or about buildings. One described 
by M. PI. Gormley on the cornice of a building made of straws, chips, and horsehair, lined 
with green leaves and paper. Eggs : 5, white.” Davie admits the record to his “Nests and 
Eggs of North American Birds”, 3rd and 4th editions, but throws it out of the final 5th edi- 
tion. Coues avoids the trap, as also does Reed in “North American Birds’ Eggs”: but 
niiserabile dictii! we find this in Ridgway’s masterpiece (“Birds of North and Middle Amer- 
ica”, Part V, p. 703), under the generic heading Nephoecetes : “Nidification. — Nest in recess- 
es among rocks or about buildings, composed of straw, feathers, leaves, bits of paper, etc., 
loosely put together and not held together by salivary secretion” — the pitiful undying error 
of the Gormley tradition ! 
One even suspects that this ancient virus has poisoned so classical a fount as the Cam- 
bridge Natural History. In Volume IX, “Birds”, by A. H. Evans, page 423, we find the 
follow'ing (abridged) paragraph : “In Cypseloides * * * (7_ niger of North America 
* * * C. rutilus and C. brunneitorques. The genus ranges to Peru and Brazil. The 
nest, placed in holes in houses and so forth, is made of straw, leaves and rubbish ; the eggs 
are four or five”. But Ridgway expressly says of Cypseloides (from which he has separated 
our Black Swift under the name Nephoecetes) : “Nest of C. brunneitorques) composed of 
moss, shallow and compact, placed in dark culverts, near water (probably in rocky banks or 
cliffs also.” No; the animus of the Evans paragraph is Gormley {op. cit. ad. naus.). We 
shall never see the last of it ! — William Leon Dawson, Santa Barbara, California. 
Albino Anatids.— In the store of Mr. Wm. Hackmeier, a well-known taxidermist of 
San Francisco, there is on exhibition a mounted specimen of a female albino White-fronted 
Goose. The specimen was sent in by a market hunter who killed it near Colusa, Colusa County, 
California, February 26, 1911. The general color is creamy white shading to light buff on 
the scapulars and primaries. The scapulars are light buff edged with creamy white. Two 
conspicuous characters help in identifying this specimen as belonging to the species Anser 
albifrons gambeli. One is the white area at the base of the bill, which, although not con- 
trasting with the cream color of the head, is yet easily distinguishable. The other is the 
presence of five dusky brown feathers on the breast which give it the characteristic “speckle- 
belly” appearance. The specimen is in worn plumage. Mr. Hackmeier reports the bill as 
being “flesh color” and the feet as “pink”. Measurements ; Folded wing 39 millimeters ; 
bill along culmen 43 ; tarsus 70. 
A female albino Mallard Duck ( Anas platyrhynchos) was recently presented to the Cali- 
fornia Museum of Vertebrate Zoology by Mr. George Thompson of Gridley, Butte County, 
California. The bird was shot by Mr. Thompson along with other ducks near Gridley on 
January 7, 1914. The entire plumage of the bird is white except for light brownish centers 
to some of the feathers of the breast, abdomen, and back of neck, and for brownish feathers 
on top of the head. According to Ridgway’s Color Standards (1912), the bill is capucine- 
orange and the feet salmon-orange. Measurements are as follows: Total length 556 milli- 
meters; folded wing 279; bill along culmen 53; tarsus 46. — H. C. Bryant, Museum of Ver- 
tebrate Zoology, University of California, Berkeley. 
