106 OUR FEATHERED FRIENDS. 
as if she expected to find the babies there. Not finding 
them with us, she went back to the shrub as if nothing 
had happened. 
It was a wonderful thing to have this shy bird so 
trustful and willing to have her photograph taken. 
The older of the two birds left the nest first, and we 
had hard work to get him to be still enough for the last 
sitting. The mother came down and sat between the 
two birds on the twig, and looked at the bird who 
wouldn’t keep still, as if she were scolding him. 
She seemed just like a real person taking her baby 
to the artist’s to have his picture taken. Once two 
strange old hummers came when we were taking the 
pictures, and bothered us a good deal. They made our 
mother hummer nervous and cross, and she drove them 
away. Itseemed to us that these birds wanted to have 
their picture taken too, but we could not quite catch 
them, because they were not well enough acquainted 
with us and the camera. 
One day the babies left the old battered nest and flew 
to the trees. The rim of the nest was torn and worn 
away by the feet of the mother as she stood to feed the 
young. We noticed that for a few days after they 
were hatched she fed them every fifteen minutes, but 
as they grew stronger she gave them their food only 
once an hour, or at even longer intervals. 
After they had flown, there came a hard storm, and 
we went out in the morning expecting to find the babies 
dead on the ground. But not so; there they sat in the 
