THE WOOD THRUSH 



I sat on a log to rest. Something touched my foot and I looked 

 down to see a big, black water-snake passing from pool to pool. 

 It would not strike, save in self-defense; but I wonder if I shall 

 ever learn my woodcraft sufficiently to see near me a snake, no 

 matter how harmless, without a feeling of horror. 



From the hour the mother bird felt the quickening to life 

 of four little shell-incased bodies against her breast, she became 

 a fanatic, so my work was easy. She allowed me to make 

 studies of her on her nest and even to stroke her wing as she 

 brooded. I never tried to pick her up. I thought of it and 

 wondered if it could be done, but I was afraid she might grip 

 with her feet and carry an egg from the nest a danger not to be 

 risked when there was no greater result to be accomplished than 

 merely to prove that she could be handled. 



After the nestlings hatched, they soon grew so accustomed to 

 me that they cared not a particle whether their mother or I 

 dropped the worms and berries into their mouths. Many in- 

 teresting studies were secured of them but not one nearly equal- 

 ling a pair of the young on the day they left the nest. These 

 babies were bright, alert and sweet, beautifully coloured and very 

 easy to coax into poses. Surely the male made as exquisite a 

 singer as his father, and the female another brave tender-eyed 

 mother bird. 



The taking of these pictures was comparatively easy. Fight- 

 ing my way through the thicket, carrying heavy cameras, drag- 

 ging a twenty-foot step-ladder for a tripod, avoiding poisonous 

 vines, snakes, miring in muck, being stung by insects and 

 scratched by briers was not so easy, but all that is in any real 

 field-worker's daily life. 



Here is a study of this rare and beautiful bird-home and of 

 the pair of handsome youngsters hatched from it; but what would 

 I not give if everyone could hear the Bell Bird's exquisite notes, 



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