178 AMONGST THE WOODLAND BIRDS— 
no marked song, and only chirrups weakly 
now and then. 
The dependence of a young bird upon its 
parents for food, even though out of the nest, 
was well illustrated by a fledgling thrush 
which we discovered sitting patiently in the 
fork of a tree. It was in an expectant atti- 
tude, with its head thrown back, a position 
from which it did not move whilst I took two 
exposures at a distance of six feet of two and 
a half minutes each (the lens at F/32), neces- 
sitated by the bad light and the waning day. 
We thought it was asleep, but when I ap- 
proached to remove an ivy leaf close to its - 
head that kept moving with the breeze, for a 
third photograph, it fluttered away with a 
squeal of distress. Plate LVI, which shows 
the bird, illustrates well the remark I made 
in the introduction of Part I that photographs 
of living birds for descriptive purposes are 
often unsatisfactory, because the background 
and surroundings show no contrast to the 
subject. 
Though we had seen many nests this 
