THE CARDINAL GROSBEAK 



interesting. There was no way to photograph a Cardinal with- 

 out a nest to lure him. How then was I to bring the big bird, 

 from the big egg I had found to account for him, up to his first 

 mating? I was forced to send him south, but as Cardinals mi- 

 grate, especially the young for their first winter, that was all right. 

 I thought seriously of going to Florida to try my luck, but I was 

 overwhelmingly busy. How I did want to reproduce that 

 crimson bird on a waxy -green orange bough! There was a 

 nest location from which I had made several good pictures, 

 for the Cardinals had preempted the sumacs on this stretch 

 of river-bank for years, so there was plenty of sumac setting. 

 But how was a Cardinal ever to be found alone on something 

 that would answer for a southern tree for the opening of my 

 story? 



Watering plants in my conservatory one day I scratched my 

 wrist on the thorn of a lemon -tree. That solved my problem in a 

 hurry. Before night the tub containing the tree was worked 

 into the Cardinal's surroundings, covered with moss and grass, 

 then the tree so arranged that a small limb replaced the 

 perch on which both male and female alighted on entering the 

 nest. The birds are accustomed to having all paths, save their 

 trackless one of air, changed with every passing windstorm; it 

 was a limb, green like the other, so it was used instead. Four 

 exposures were made on the male bird there before that device 

 was removed. Three of them were suitable to use, two were 

 better than I hoped for, while one was unaccountably foreshort- 

 ened so that it was a failure. After my success with the lemon- 

 tree, which I thought so like an orange as to answer, that perch 

 was changed almost every day to give a thread of continuity to 

 my illustration. 



A Cardinal is a strenuous lover, his attachment to his mate 

 being unusually strong, his fighting capacity equal in force to his 



