174 Northern Observations of Inland Birds 



the female. He leaves the eggs immediately the shutter 

 clicks, whereas the female, on hearing it, merely looks 

 about her, then seems at once to forget. 



In bird and animal photography it is particularly 

 noticeable that it is the strange that frightens. If one can 

 tune one's shutter so that its release merely resembles 

 the cracking of a twig, the wild subject is not much 

 alarmed, but the click of steel, or the sound of a bhnd 

 winding on a drum — sounds entirely unknown in the 

 wilderness — cause instantaneous alarm, which is not at 

 once forgotten. My experience is that it is not so much 

 a matter of having a sikfit shutter as it is of having a 

 shutter which makes such noise as it has to make after 

 the exposure, and providing it is the right kind of noise 

 the actual volume of sound does not matter much. 



The sandpipers are the elected sentries of their environ- 

 ment, just as are the curlews and the redshanks in their 

 different sphere, and I have specially noticed that these 

 birds are abnormally restless on still, thundery nights. 

 Whether it is that the weather has a direct effect upon 

 the birds themselves, or whether it is that on such quiet 

 nights they are more conscious of ominous sounds in 

 their surroundings, it is hard to say. On certain still 

 nights in June, however, the sandpipers are never still. 

 Flying, aHghting, calling, calHng, their shrill notes haunt 

 one's ears, and one knows that their chicks are just hatched, 

 and that both parents are wild with anxiety lest some harm 

 befall them. 



