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Bird -Lore 



who had occupied a new nesting site the first season it was available 

 and already had become so accustomed to man that she permitted her- 

 self to be photographed at short range; but how little 1 knew is evi- 

 dent on reading Mr. Burroughs' history of her season's experiences. 

 Doubtless he could give similarly interesting accounts of other of his 

 bird neighbors to whom he introduced me that day and the next, and 

 whose portraits I present with only passing comment. 



The Hummer, for instance, who, with rare consideration for the 

 needs of bird photography, had placed her nest in the low sweeping 

 limb of an apple tree (see frontispiece), was an old acquaintance of his, 



HUMMER IHEDING 



and no detail of her domestic affairs, from the building of the nest to 

 the appearance of the young, had escaped him. Acquaintance, I say, 

 rather than friend, for in spite of the fact that her nest was within a 

 few feet of a pathway, the suspicious little creature invariably darted 

 from it whenever any one approached to within twenty feet of her. 

 However, she returned in four or five minutes, sometimes alighting 

 and settling in the nest as though with one movement, at others 

 perching on its edge when the two surprisingly short bills of her half- 

 fledged young could be seen projecting slightly beyond the rim of 

 their downy home. This pose preceded what Mr. Torrey has so well 

 described as the "frightful looking act" of feeding, of which the accom- 

 panying picture shows the attitude assumeil by the parent. 



