Birap Lire AND Birp PHOTOGRAPHY. 203 
on its nest. Some observers have stated that the woodcock when 
incubating always keeps her eyes shut—lest, in the words of the 
poet, “ Her eyes should betray her secret.’’ My experience has 
been that the eyes are more often open than closed. This bird 
was so tame that I could stroke her back with my hand, and she 
reared her young without mishap. 
SNIPE. 
This is the nest of a common snipe, well concealed by a tuft 
of rushes, which have been cut so as to show the eggs. Our 
next photograph, of the bird on its nest, was obtained with great 
difficulty. Although a dummy camera had been erected for 
many days, the bird was extraordinarily shy. The ground was 
flat and quite open, and though I could worm my way to within 
thirty feet of the camera, where I had the pneumatic release, 
however cautiously I peeped up to see if the bird was on its nest, 
it always saw me before I saw it, and was off before I could do 
anything. At last one day I pressed the bulb on chance of the 
bird being on its nest, with the result shown. This photograph 
was taken in splendid light at noon on June 24th, 1905, with an 
exposure of one-thirtieth, the lens being stopped down to 23. 
Woop PIGEON. 
Here we see the nest of the wood pigeon, a nest not often 
easy to photograph on account of the height from the ground 
at which it is usually placed. This slide shows two young wood 
pigeons, fully fledged, in the nest. These birds gave us a 
great deal of bother to photograph, for they were sufficiently 
educated to resent the presence of the camera; and as fast as 
one bird was placed in the nest the other walked off to one side 
of the nest and so become out of focus. However, patience at 
last gave us their portrait. 
CURLEW. 
The curlew’s nest is annually increasing in numbers on the 
grassy hills in the Thornhill district. | Here we see the nest 
and eggs. In the spring of the year our hillsides still resound 
with the cries of this bird, and we have read that in the old 
Covenanters’ days these birds often forewarned some poor wretch 
hiding in the peat hags of the approach of Claverhouse’s 
