xviii BRITISH BIEDS' NESTS. 



Fearful that we had not siicceedecl, my brother 

 returned to our quarters a mile away and developed 

 the negative — alas ! only to find that the vibration 

 of the apparatus had utterly ruined it. We were 

 now reduced to our last chance. The breeze had 

 increased if anything, and the prospect of obtaining 

 a decent picture certainly looked gloomy. We 

 rammed the legs of the tripod as far into the 

 hard-baked handbreadth of ground as possible, 

 weighted each with a heavy leaning stone, hung 

 a huge iron otter trap beneath the body of the 

 camera, and placed as big a stone as the construc- 

 tion of the machine would bear on the top ; then 

 waited, jackets in hand and shoulder to shoulder, 

 for a temporary lull in the wind. Luckily the 

 result rewarded our trouble. 



The Kingfisher's nesting-hole was in such a 

 position that my brother w^as obliged to photo- 

 graph it standing waist-deep in the river Mole, the 

 swirling waters of which reached very nearly up 

 to the body of the camera. The nests of the Eing 

 Dove, Sjiarrow Hawk, and several other high builders 

 were obtained by climbing adjoining trees and 

 lashing the apparatus thereto, building scaffolds 

 and other contrivances, the difficulties of which a 

 practical photographer alone can fully appreciate. 



Some of the pictures were obtained with one of 

 Messrs. Dallmeyer's tele-photo lenses, an admirable 

 contrivance for inaccessible objects and timid 

 animals, which it would be impossible to approach 

 near enough with an ordinary apparatus. Despite 

 its diflliculties and dangers, photographing natural 



