Bird Remains from Cave Deposits in New Mexico

In the course of the past three years the authors have been occupied, as time permitted, with the identification of avian remains from cave deposits situated in the Pyramid Peak range at the southern end of the Organ Mountains of Dona Ana County, New Mexico. These bird bo nes were taken from two localities on opposite slopes of Pyramid Peak, Conkling Cavern on the east and Shelter Cave on the west. Exhumation of the bones began in 1929 and was continued in the summer season of 1930 by parties from the Los Angeles Museum where the material now is deposited. Up to the time of this writing only four of the species identified from the caves named have received mention in print. Two of these were described as new: Geococcyx co&Zing& Conkling Road-runner (Howard, Condor, XXXIII, 193 1, pp. 206-209), and Pyelorhamphus molothroides, a cowbird-like icterid (Miller, Auk, XLIX, 1932, pp. 38-41). The other two species, Cryptoglaux funerea, Arctic Owl (better known under the common name of the local subspecies, Richardson Owl, which the remains doubtless represent) (See Howard, Condor, XXXIII, 1931, p. 216) and Gymnogyps californianus, California Condor (Science News, Science n.s., LXXI, Apr. 4, 1930, p. xiv), both.represent considerable extensions of range compared with the known distribution of these species today. The entire avifauna of the caves, with all possible identifications completed, now amounts to fifty-eight species. It comprises a few extinct forms but chiefly a large group of species still living. Some of this group are not, however, found in the region under present fauna1 and floral conditions. Pending a fully detailed report upon the birds from these caves, which will appear later in the Los Angeles Museum Publications, it seems desirable to list briefly at this time all species which we have found present. Thus may be placed on record many species heretofore unknown from prehistoric times, as well as additional information relative to changes in distribution. In the interim since the first of our material was collected, bird remains from a cave in Rocky Arroyo in the Guadalupe Mountains, “about fifty miles by road west and somewhat north of Carlsbad, New Mexico,” have been reported by Wetmore (Condor, XXXIII, 1931, pp. 76-77 ; X~~IV, 1932, pp. 141-42). These remains were associated with bones of extinct mammals such as Equus fraternus and Tetrameryx, and many of them were found with human materials of the Basket-maker culture. In both Conkling and Shelter caves the bird bones were associated with remains of extinct mammals and part were also associated with evidences of man (human skeletal remains in the former and materials of the Basket-maker culture in the latter). The indications are, therefore, that at least part of the Conkling Cavern and Shelter Cave bones are approximately contemporaneous with those from Rocky Arroyo. It should be of value, then, while presenting a list of species found by ourselves, to include also in the tabulation Wetmore’s findings in this third cave only ninety miles east of the Organ Mountains.