Vol. 1 



A BI-MONTHLY MAGAZINE 

 DEVOTED TO THE STUDY AND PROTECTION OF BIRDS 



Official Organ of the Audubon Societies 



April, 1899 



No. 2 



The Camera as an Aid in the Study of Birds 



BY DR. THOS. S. ROBERTS 



Director Department of Birds, Natural History Survey of Minnesota 

 With photographs from Nature by the Author 



{Concluded from page ij) 



^URNING reluctantly from the attractive little 

 Chickadee family, described in the preceding 

 number of this magazine, we will next seek the 

 acquaintance of a bird of entirely different feather, 

 and, what is of more moment to the bird photog- 

 rapher, of entirely different disposition. 



The Killdeer Plover, perhaps from his close 

 kinship to the fraternity of game birds, has come 

 to regard man and all human devices with deep suspicion, and to 

 get on terms of close fellowship with him is no easy matter. While 

 not himself an usual object of the sportsman's effort, owing to his lean 

 body and indifferent savor, he is the immediate relative of those 

 much sought-after birds, the Golden and the Black-bellied Plover. 

 Unlike these more aristocratic members of the Plover group, the 

 Killdeer does not retire to semi-arctic fastnesses to rear its brood, 

 but nests wherever found throughout the eastern United States. Its 

 ever-restless nature and loud alarum, " killdee, killdee," as it moves 

 from place to place, or circles round and round, always at a safe 

 distance, together with its common occurrence throughout populated 

 as well as wild regions, makes this plebeian well-known to every coun- 

 try lad and the bane of every would-be stealthy Nimrod. So noisily 

 persistent is its outcry that it has been dubbed by ornithologists 

 vocifera — JEgialitis vocifera — and a most appropriate appellation it is. 



Like many loquacious people, Mr. and Mrs. Killdeer have a 

 rather lazy vein in their makeup, and spend but little time or effort 

 nest building. A little depression lined with a few bits of stick or 



