34- 



Pictures of Bird Life 



Cock Whinchat {Pralincola riibetra). 



all probability on the ground 

 somewhere behind your hiding- 

 place, perfectly aware of your 

 presence, and taking stock of all 

 your proceedings. 



There are few scenes in bird 

 life more satisfying in an artistic 

 sense than the picture of a A\ ater- 

 hen lazily paddling among the 

 reeds, nodding its head and flirting 

 its tail at e^ery stroke, so as to 

 display the white under-tail coverts, 

 bird and reeds reflected in the glassy surface, and the 

 reflections just broken by the ripple caused by its move- 

 ments. What hours I have spent in the vain endeavour 

 to portray such a simple and common scene as this, wliicli 

 may be enjoyed in almost every pond in the kingdom ! 

 It is necessary for success to get the bird in a patch of 

 water reflecting the sky, and it is such a skulker that it 

 seems to know what you want, and to be persistent in 

 keeping to the reflection of the bank and trees, where its 

 dusky plumage does not get the contrast necessary for a 

 good photograph in the short exposure which alone you 

 are enabled to gwe. 



In watching the ways of Xatiu-es children, the artistic 

 beauty of the unconscious pictures they make amid the 

 scenes of their daily life is, I think, the greatest induce- 

 ment to the desire of obtaining pictorial records of their 



