THE HOME LIFE OF WILD BIRDS. 



CHAPTER I. 



A NEW METHOD OF BIRD STUDY AND PHOTOGRAPHY. 



THE method of studying the habits of wild birds which this volume illustrates con- 

 sists in bringing the birds to you and then camping beside them, in watching 

 their behavior at arm's length and in recording with the camera their varied 

 activities. By means of such a method one may live with the birds for days at a time, 

 and watch the play of their most interesting habits and instincts. The actors are not con- 

 fined in cages; they suffer indeed no restraint, excepting that only which their nature 

 imposes. They come and go at will, and their life is as free and untrammeled as ever. 



The method enables one to see with his own eyes at a distance of a few inches or 

 feet, more or less, what birds do in and about their nests, and at the same time affords 

 the rare opportunity of making photographs, not a single picture or a chance shot now 

 and then, but an unlimited series of pictures to illustrate the behavior of birds in the full- 

 est manner and at the most interesting period of their lives. It is often an easy matter 

 to focus your camera directly upon the bird itself and to give a time exposure when 

 desired. Moreover, you can approach as near as you wish, and make photographs of any 

 required size. 



I will now give the reader a less enigmatical account of the method, first considering 

 its psychological basis or the scientific principles on which it rests, and then recording in 

 a separate chapter, as practical examples of its working, the exact history of a few of the 

 cases in which it has been applied. 



The method in use depends mainly upon two conditions: 



(1) The control of the nesting site, and 



(2) The concealment of the observer. 



By nesting site is meant the nest and its immediate surroundings, such as a twig, 

 branch, hollow trunk, stem, or whatever part of a tree the nest may occupy, a bush, stub, 

 strip of sod, or tussock of sedge, that is the nest with its immediate 

 settings. If the nest, like that of an Oriole, is fastened to the leafy Nestin ^ite 6 



branch of a tree, the nesting bough is cut off, and the whole is then care- 

 fully lowered to the ground and set up in a good light, so that the branch with the nest 

 shall occupy the same relative positions which they did before. The nest, however, is 

 now but four instead of forty or more feet from the ground. 



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