HUNTING BIRDS WITH CAMERA 



with my face not more than a yard from the ground, 

 something happened so suddenly that I almost fell over 

 backwards. A Woodcock flushed from right under- 

 neath my nose and almost hit me in the face. I gave 

 an exclamation of surprise, and of joy too, for surely 

 this must be the nest. Ned saw the bird go off twitter- 

 ing and alight in the swamp beyond. He hurried up 

 to see the eggs, for it was nesting time, and we were 

 hunting for Woodcocks' nests. No! I could hardly 

 credit my senses. No nest there, and the bird so 

 tame.^ But it was even so. More disappointed hunters 

 it would be hard to find. The other bird of the pair, 

 meanwhile, had been lying close, not ten yards away, 

 and in our search for the nest we finally flushed it too, 

 though we did not get quite so near. 



There were various other alder swamps in the 

 neighborhood, where Woodcock had been seen, and 

 one day I induced a resident hunter, who was Wood- 

 cock-wise, to bring his dog for a tramp with me, to try 

 to find a nest. The dog did not lead us to anything, 

 but his owner happened to see some eggshells lying on 

 the ground, the remains of three Woodcock's eggs 

 which had been eaten by some animal, for the prints 

 of sharp teeth were in the shells. The place was a 

 bushy tract at the edge of a meadow, and the nest was 

 a small hollow on a grassy hummock beside a low alder. 



But back along the same brook w^here we flushed the 

 birds someone else had better luck. A young man 

 came in to cut alders for bean poles. After chopping 



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