vi BRITISH BIRDS' NESTS 



frankly confess that at the time I regarded these 

 prophetic words in the light of fatherly encourage- 

 ment from one of the most kind-hearted men in 

 Britain, but a few years have sufficed to prove 

 their absolute truth. 



Since the first edition of " British Birds' Nests " 

 was issued, my brother and I have spared neither 

 labour nor money to secure additional photographs 

 not only of nests and eggs, but of the birds them- 

 selves. " Our Rarer British Breeding Birds " was 

 published as a supplementary volume in eighteen 

 hundred and ninety-nine, and embodied the result 

 of our further researches up to that time. The 

 present Revised and Enlarged Edition of the major 

 work having destroyed the reason for the further 

 existence of the minor one, we have included the 

 best of the pictures appearing in its pages, together 

 with all the appropriate photographs secured during 

 the last seven years. 



It may be of interest to mention that, from first 

 to last, we have travelled by railroad and steam- 

 boat alone upwards of thirty thousand miles, and 

 exposed over ten thousand plates in pursuit of bird 

 photography. 



The value of the camera where truth and accuracy 

 are a desideratum may easily be seen by noting 

 the distinguishing sexual marks over the eyes of the 

 male and female Red-Necked Phalarope figured on 

 page 277, and comparing the illustration with the 

 coloured plates representing this species in some of 

 the best books ever published on British Birds. 



Of the benefit which has accrued to the wild 

 birds of our country by the introduction of this 

 harmless and yet truly sporting method of studying 

 Nature, the following extract from one of many 



