Method of Bird Study and Photography 5 



Thrush occupies the center of a dense thorn bush which no 

 human eye can penetrate and much less that of the camera, its 

 main supports are cut off, and the essential parts are removed 

 to the outside of the clump or to any favorable point close at 

 hand. If the nest is but five or ten feet up, the main stem is 

 severed, and the nesting branch lowered to the four-foot mark, 

 a convenient working height. 



I wish to emphasize the fact that the nest itself is usually not 

 moved or disturbed, or rather that it is moved only with its 

 supports. The change is one of space relations, which may 

 change with every passing breeze, but the relation of nest to 

 support remains undisturbed. 



This sudden displacement of the nesting bough is of no 

 special importance to either old or young, provided certain pre- 

 cautions are taken to be dwelt upon a little later. It is as if an 

 apartment or living room were removed from the fourth story 

 of some human abode to the ground floor, or in the case of the 

 ground-building birds as if the first story were raised to a level 

 with the second. The immediate surroundings of the nest re- 

 main the same in any case. The nest might indeed be taken 

 from its bough or from the sward, but this would be inadvisable, 

 chiefly because it would destroy the natural site or the exact 

 conditions selected and in some measure determined by the 

 birds themselves. 



For an observatory I have adopted a green tent which effectu- 

 ally conceals the student together with his camera and entire 

 outfit. The reader will find this fully described in 

 the chapter on the tools of the bird-photographer. Conceal- 

 The tent is pitched beside the nest, and when in opera- observer 

 tion is open only at one point marked by a small 

 square window, in line with the photographic lens and the tent. 



It seems at first thought strange and almost incredible that 

 one may take such liberties with wild birds, without p r i nc ipi e s 

 wreaking destruction upon the young or introducing which un- 

 such unnatural conditions as would be intolerable derlie the 

 to every true student and lover of birds, but this Method 

 is by no means the case. No injury is wrought upon old or 



