USING THE ORDINARY CAMERA 197 



and flew off long before we were anywhere near them. 

 We pitched the tent in a clump of bushes, decking 

 it with foliage, and my companion departed, leaving 

 me hidden. No sooner had he withdrawn than back 

 came the herons, alighting on their nests, and for two 

 hours I had the opportunity of my life to photo- 

 graph the splendid birds in all their interesting poses. 



While working in the tent it is necessary with some 

 birds, particularly with herons, to guard against 

 their seeing any movement inside. To this end I 

 pin a cloth before the peek-hole, through a small 

 slit of which the lens tube fits tightly. In this way 

 the bird cannot see the hand setting the shutter. 

 Even the lens must be moved very deliberately, and 

 one must avoid any rustling or the cracking of twigs 

 underfoot. Gulls and terns, on the contrary, do not 

 ordinarily become alarmed by seeing one at the peek- 

 hole, and they are not so sensitive to noise. With 

 them one may sometimes use the reflecting camera in 

 the tent, the shutter of which is altogether too noisy 

 to use on herons. The slight sound made by the 

 shutter which I use on my small ordinary camera sel- 

 dom startles a bird by the tent. 



The experience of being in the midst of a colony, 

 with a crowd of birds close around one, is wonder- 

 fully interesting. It seems as though one were a 

 bird oneself, accepted as a member of bird-society, 

 and it is hard to realize that the whole thing is not 

 a dream. This was my feeling in the midst of a 

 great colony of some two thousand pairs of black- 



