2 T HE A.U.D U BOONY 5BrU i aes 
in various parts of the world. On the west side of South Table Mountain, 
just on the edge of Golden, is a large, more or less detached mass of basalt 
known locally as “Castle Rock,” the upper hundred feet of which is almost 
perpendicular. This has a special ornithological interest of its own because 
of a colony of white-throated swifts, which nest in the crevices, and are to 
be seen all summer long flying about it and never seeming to alight. That 
they do alight, however, and build nests in the sheltered crevices, I can 
testify, for one spring by patient watching for a long period, I located 
one particular opening to which a swift flew several times, on each occasion 
carrying a feather in its bill. By the aid of some of my pupils I was a 
few days later lowered down that side of the mass of rock, gained a pre- 
carious foothold, and so was able to peep into the depths of the cavity. 
There, just beyond the reach of my outstretched fingers, I could see the 
nest, apparently chiefly comprised of chicken feathers, such as I had seen 
the birds carrying, massed so that they concealed the interior of the nest, 
so that I can only accept the words of others that the eggs are dull-white. 
This species is all of an inch longer than our chimney swift, and is the 
only one of the four species of North American swifts to surpass the 
European swift in the amount of white on its chin, throat, and breast, 
our common chimney swift having a dark-gray throat, and no white 
whatever. 
Of other small birds the rock wrens were very common on the lower 
slopes of the Table Mountains, nesting beneath pieces of the basalt which 
have rolled down the declevities, and lodged with spaces between them 
and the more solid ground. 
Northward from Golden the country rises gradually for six or seven 
miles until another mountain stream, Ralston Creek, is reached. Beyond 
this creek the “Bear Tooth Mountain,’ a red sandstone hogback, rises 
abruptly to an altitude of over 7,000 feet. About halfway from Golden 
to Ralston Creek, a small stream, usually without water in summer, and 
known locally as “Dry Creek,” flows out from the range to the west along 
a picturesque canyon, although not nearly as large as Clear Creek Canyon. 
By its rugged topography this region somehow seems especially adapted 
for the presence of eagles, and indeed a quarter of a century ago golden 
eagles were by no means rare in this neighborhood, with an occasional bald 
eagle also to be seen. 
When I first went to Golden I frequently saw large birds which I 
offhand assumed to be buzzards or large hawks, but it was not long before 
I realized that they must be eagles. They soared much as did the turkey 
buzzards I had known as a boy, but were seen either singly or in pairs, 
and not in groups as buzzards so often are. 
With northern Illinois as a birthplace, and the following twenty-odd 
years spent in southern Michigan and north-central Indiana, my acquain- 
tance with eagles was far from extensive, and practically limited to 
oecasional glimpses of some lone specimen of bald eagle, soaring about 
rather aimlessly in those regions least disturbed by agriculture, as if 
searching for ancestral homes. The swamp lands of the upper Kankakee 
River, not yet drained as now, and to a less extent the Indiana Sand Dune 
