THE TIDE HAS TURNED Bal 
Here was an opportunity to secure a much-desired 
photograph, and armed with the needed apparatus, as 
well as specimens of both the Nighthawk and Whip-poor- 
will, I boarded an early train for Stevenson, Connecticut, 
prepared to gain my point with bird as well as with man. 
The latter accepted the specimens as incontrovertible 
facts, and readjusted his views as to the status of the birds 
they represented, and we may therefore at once turn our 
attention to the Nighthawk, who was waiting so patiently 
on a bit of granite out in the hay-fields. The sun was 
setting when we reached the flat rock on which her eggs 
had been laid and young hatched, and where she had last 
been seen; but a fragment of egg-shell was the only evi- 
dence that the bare-looking spot had once been a bird’s 
home. The grass had lately been mowed, and there was 
no immediately surrounding cover in which the bird 
might have hidden. It is eloquent testimony of the value 
of her protective colouring, therefore, that we should almost 
have stepped on the bird, who had moved to a near-by 
flat rock as we approached the place in which we had 
expected to find her. 
Far more convincing, however, was her faith in her own 
invisibility. Even the presence of a dog did not tempt her 
to flight, and when the camera was erected on its tripod 
within three feet of her body, squatting so closely to its 
rocky background, her only movement was occasioned by 
her rapid breathing. 
There was other cause, however, besides the belief in her 
Own inconspicuousness to hold her to the rock: one little 
downy chick nestled at her side, and with instinctive 
obedience was as motionless as its parent. 
