184 HOMING WITH THE BIRDS 



course of slipping down the bird's long oesophagus, 

 and while it is not the prize I might have had, I 

 still regard it as rare, a true case of "a frog in the 

 throat." 



I have previously mentioned securing the like- 

 ness of a male kingbird, which seems to me almost, 

 if not quite, my greatest triumph in bird portraiture 

 from both scientific and artistic standpoints. The 

 birds of this nest were so very confiding and their 

 location was such that I could work around it with 

 great ease and no inconvenience whatever to the 

 birds. Among a series of two or three dozen 

 exposures made of these birds, there was one in 

 which the nest was sharply defined; each of the 

 heads of the four nestlings was well outlined. The 

 mother bird perched with her breast at about a 

 three quarters angle toward the camera. The 

 exposure was made just at the instant when she 

 was regurgitating food for her young. The cutting 

 of her beak, her eyes, her crest, and the entire 

 detail of the picture were so fine that for scientific 

 and artistic reasons, I regard it as very good indeed. 



Twice in my life I have succeeded in photo- 

 graphing a brooding dove. One of these pictures 

 was made of a bird nesting on some debris that 

 floods had heaped on the river bank. I approached 

 the dove by degrees with extreme caution and 

 succeeded in setting up my camera and taking a 

 picture of her the very first time I visited her nest. 

 It was not a good picture. The bird's back was 



