FRIENDS IN FEATHERS 



lifetime of one person, goes with a gun, shooting specimens to 

 articulate and mount from which to draw illustrations, he will 

 no doubt testify that birds are the wildest, shyest things alive, 

 because that has been his experience with them. 



If he goes with a note-book, a handful of wheat and the 

 soul of a poet, he will describe the birds as almost human, be- 

 cause his own great heart liumanizes their every action. 



I go with a camera for the purpose of bringing from the fields 

 and forests characteristic pictorial studies of birds, and this book 

 is to tell and to prove what my experiences have been with them. 

 I slip among them in their parental hour, obtain their likenesses, 

 and tell the story of how the work was accomplished. I was 

 born in the country and reared among the birds in a place where 

 they were protected and fearless. A deep love for, and a com- 

 prehension of wild things, run through the thread of my dis- 

 position, peculiarly equipping me to do these things. 



In one season, when under ten years of age, I located sixty 

 nests, while I dropped food into the open beaks in every one of 

 them. Soon the old birds became so accustomed to me, and so 

 convinced of my good intentions, that they would alight on my 

 head or shoulders in a last hop to reach their nests with the food 

 they had brought. Playing with the birds was my idea of amuse- 

 ment. Pets were my kind of dolls. It did not occur to me that 

 I was learning anything that would be of use in after years; now 

 comes the realization that knowledge acquired for myself in those 

 days is drawn upon every time I approach the home of a bird. 



When I decided that the camera was the only method by 

 which to illustrate my observations of bird life, all that was neces- 

 sary was to assemble my outfit, learn how to use it, to compound 

 chemicals, to develop and fix plates; tone and w r ash prints. How 

 to approach the birds I knew better than anything else. 



This work is to tell of and to picture my feathered friends in 



6 



