176 Bird -Lore 



throughout of the same material. They consist of a coat to my knees, well 

 furnished with large outside pockets, wide enough to take at least two quarter- 

 plate double dark slides, and a watch-pocket for trifles; a short skirt which, 

 if necessary, can be discarded, hence the length of coat; a thick woollen shirt 

 to match, and a second and longer skirt. A light shirt is often seen through the 

 peep-hole of one's tent, by a wary bird, and it is often too hot for a coat. The 

 principal use of the second skirt is for calling on the powers-that-be, when 

 permission is wanted to hunt in private grounds. Besides which, in time the 

 short skirt shrinks in length to a mere kilt, and every economical woman 

 knows that a coat will outlast two skirts. I am not writing for millionaires, 

 but for working-women of limited means, whose special outfit will have to 

 last several years. If well-cut to start with, and not made in the latest evanes- 

 cent fashion, although it may have "taken on color from the atmosphere,"* 

 such a suit as I am describing will always look well and workmanlike. The 

 older and shabbier one's "birding" clothes get, the more one loves them. 

 When they are put away till the next season, it is sometimes just lovely to 

 take them down and examine them. That brown stain was acquired in a peat 

 bog in Ultima Thule; the little three-cornered slit is where you caught on a 

 barbed wire, when creeping on hands and knees one moonlit night, to where 

 the Night Jars {Caprimulgus europceus europaus) were dancing in the heather 

 while their mates brooded. The long scratch across one wading-boot is 

 where you stumbled amongst the saw-edged sedges. 



"On a marsh that was old ere kings begun," your mind goes out to the 

 mystic silence of the fen-country, and the dim dawn where light mists roll 

 up from the reed-beds and waterways — fantastic shapes chasing each other 

 across the wide spaces; ghosts of Viking and Saxon renewing ancient combats 

 in a land where their fair-haired descendants still call the birds by their old 

 Norse names. So much for one's old clothes 



Of course when really on the warpath, it is not easy for the bird-photog- 

 rapher to look respectable, and one must be prepared to sacrifice appearance. 

 I well remember one blustering May day on the marshes, when my tent 

 refused to stand up, and ultimately was supported entirely by myself inside 

 it. Finally, when I emerged from the wreck of canvas and steel supports, 

 minus every hairpin, dirty and disheveled, I found myself face to face with 

 three exceedingly well-groomed male naturalists, whom the keeper had brought 

 up to introduce to me. It was not the moment I should have chosen, but I 

 laughed, and they all joined in the search for the missing hairpins! 



Modern bird-photography has attained a pitch of luxurious ease undreamt 

 of by the earlier workers. One used to lie for hours beneath a heap of rubbish 

 till every muscle became numb. The light portable tent which any woman can 

 make for herself (assisted by the village blacksmith), the tilting-table, lens- 



*This illuminating description of an old coat is Thoreau's or Richard Jeffries' — I forget 

 which. 



