A P P L E 1 O N S ' SPRING BULLETIN 



FRANK M. CHAPMAN. 



The author of Bird Studies zvith a Camera, Mr. Frank M. Chapman, the 

 Assistant Curator of" Vertebrate Zoology in the American Museum of Natural 

 History, is known to amateurs and to students and teachers of natural history as 

 an authoritative and popular writer, as the author of " Handbook of Birds of 

 Eastern North America" and "Bird-Life," as the 

 editor of " Bird-Lore," and as a most successful lec- 

 turer upon ornithological subjects. Mr. Chapman is 

 also a leader in the movement for the protection of 

 birds from destruction for commercial purposes. With 

 the multiplication of books upon birds by inexpert and 

 half-informed writers there has developed a reaction 

 and an increasing demand for works like those of Mr. 

 Chapman, which are absolutely authoritative. His 

 "Handbook of Birds" has become a standard au- 

 thority, and his charming "Bird-Life," with the 

 numerous illustrations by Mr. Ernest Seton Thomp- 

 son, is one of the rare books which combines exact 

 knowledge with a faculty of clear and simple exposition. To these books Mr. 

 Chapman has now added a third which shows his unprecedented success as an 

 observer of birds with a camera. He develops a new field of Nature study with 

 astonishing results. Mr. Chapman describes the kind of camera required, and 

 shows how it can be used in depicting the life histories of birds, and his numer- 

 ous illustrations present in a most striking manner the value of photography in 

 graphically recording the haunts, food, nesting sites, nests, eggs, appearance and 

 development of the young, and other features of bird life. 



In the introduction to his delightful and suggestive book Mr. Chapman writes 

 of the charm of bird photography as follows : " As a one-time sportsman, who 

 yielded to none in his enjoyment of the chase, I can affirm that there is a fasci- 

 nation about the hunting of wild animals with a camera as far ahead of the pleas- 

 ure to be derived from their pursuit with shotgun or rifle as the sport found in 

 shooting quail is beyond that of shooting clay pigeons. Continuing the comparison 

 from a sportsman's standpoint, hunting with a camera is the highest development 

 of man's inherent love of the chase. The killing of a bird with a gun seems 

 little short of murder after one has attempted to capture its image with a lens. 

 The demands on the skill and patience of the bird photographer are endless, and 

 his pleasure is intensified in proportioji to the nature of the difficulties to be over- 

 come, and in the event of success it is perpetuated by the infinitely more satis- 

 factory results obtained. He does not rejoice over a bag of mutilated flesh and 

 feathers, but in the possession of a trophy — an eloquent token of his prowess as a 

 hunter, a talisman which holds the power of revivifying the circumstances attend- 

 ing its acquisition. What mental vision of falling birds can be as potent as the 

 actual picture of living birds in their homes ? And how immeasurably one's 

 memories are brightened by the fact that this is not a picture of what has been, 

 but of what is ! The camera thus opens the door to a field of sport previously 



