4 BIRD STUDIES WITH A CAMERA 



brightened by the fact that this is not a picture of 

 what has been but of what is ! 



The camera thus opens the door to a field of sport 

 previously closed to those who love birds too much 

 to find pleasure in killing them; to whom Bob- 

 White's ringing whistle does not give rise to mur- 

 derous speculations as to the number in his family, 

 but to an echo of the season's joy which his note 

 voices. They therefore have a new incentive to take 

 them out of doors ; for however much we love Na- 

 ture for Nature's sake, there are few of us whose 

 pleasure in an outing is not intensified by securing 

 some definite, lasting result. 



We are not all poets and seers, finding sufficient 

 reward for a hard day's tramp in a sunset glow or 

 the song of a bird. Enjoy these things as we may, 

 who would not like to perpetuate the one or the 

 other in some tangible form ? 



And here we have one of the reasons for the col- 

 lecting of birds and eggs long after the collector's 

 needs are satisfied. He goes on duplicating and 

 reduplicating merely to appease the almost univer- 

 sal desire to possess any admired although useless 

 object. Once let him appreciate, however, the pleas- 

 ure of hunting with a camera, the greater skill re- 

 quired, and the infinitely greater value of the results 

 to be obtained, and he will have no further use for 

 gun, climbing irons, and egg drill. 



Furthermore, the camera hunter possesses the ad- 

 vantage over the so-called true sportsman, in that all 

 is game that falls to his gun ; there is not a bird too 

 small or too tame to be unworthy of his attention ; 

 nor are there seasonal restrictions to be observed, 



