REVIEWS 



Photography for Bird-Lovers. By Bentley Beetham, F.Z.S. 

 Square 8vo., 126 pp., 16 plates. (Witherby & Co.) 

 5s. net. 



Although single chapters are to be found in several illustrated 

 bird- books, we have hitherto been without a complete guide 

 to the sport and art of bird- and nest- photography. Mr. 

 Beet ham's book is therefore all the more welcome, and its 

 having been written by the accomplished author of the recently 

 pubhshed Home-life of the Spoonbill, guarantees that the 

 methods which it describes must be entirely on the right 

 lines for the successful accomphshment of this difficult but 

 fascinating pursuit. 



It is safe to say that besides the ordinary difficulties of 

 photography, there are few branches of sport or art that are 

 more full of disappointments, or call for a greater exercise 

 of patience and ingenuity, than bird-photography. Hitherto 

 each worker has had to gain his experience and perfect his 

 methods, almost entirely through the many failures and rare 

 successes of his own exertions ; now, however, given a 

 \^•orking knowledge of ordinary photographic methods, the 

 beginner in bird- work will only have to follow care- 

 fully Mr. Beetham' s directions and suggestions, and he 

 wiU know that he is working on the right Hnes. There wiU 

 still be plenty of opportunity for the exercise of ingenuity 

 in overcoming the multitude of difficulties that each species 

 and the varying situations present, but these are best left 

 for each individual to overcome for himseK, as they are such 

 that only experience can teach, and it would clearly be 

 impossible to tabulate them in text- book form. Although 

 we were a Uttle disappointed at first to find nothing startlingly 

 new in Mr. Beetham' s book, it is very gratifying to find how 

 closely the working methods evolved by so clever an exponent 

 of the art, agree with one's own. 



Beginning with two chapters on the general scope of the 

 work and the apparatus required, the author takes the beginner 

 by easy stages through the still-life portraiture of nests, etc., 

 and the photograph}^ of young birds, to the more difficult and 

 fascinating portraiture of their parents by the different 

 methods of stalking and concealment. Next comes a chapter 

 on rope- work on cliffs, which, although intensely interesting, 

 will necessarily only prove of use to a few ; a short chapter 



