?o THE CONDOR [VOL. VI The red-billed tropic birds (Phaet]wn tethereus) 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 cliffs, being quite similar to the nests of duck hawks in the islands along the Lower California coast. Usually 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 6oo 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 PILlCAN ON ?IE?:T 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 [ 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 you 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
