51 The whoopers still dance 



of complete boredom. I waited until he was far in the distance 

 before I crawled out from under the blind and walked quickly back 

 to camp. 



I must record (though shamefacedly!) that I placed a photog- 

 rapher from Life magazine in jeopardy by staking him out on the 

 marsh in that same imitation bull a few weeks later. One day in 

 January I had a long-distance call from Joe Kastner, one of the 

 editors of Life and an old friend. They wanted to get some pic- 

 tures of this rare bird I was studying. Could it be done? I told 

 Joe that we couldn't get within a half mile of them. Cut that down 

 to a quarter mile, said Joe, and our man Feininger can do it with 

 a twenty-inch lens. Send him along, I told him, but I can't promise 

 anything. So, not long after this, along came Andreas Feininger, 

 whose beautiful landscape photographs of many parts of the coun- 

 try and spectacular telephoto shots of Manhattan you have prob- 

 ably seen. Andreas had never been in Texas before, and Austwell, 

 while not much like Dallas or Houston, is typical in its own pe- 

 culiar way. It was the first clear hot day in weeks, but I tried not 

 to sound too encouraging. No doubt there was some unpleasant 

 weather ahead. However, we made the long trip to camp and 

 started operations at once. Andreas and his two big lenses fitted 

 into the dummy bull all right, after we had performed an opera- 

 tion on its side so as to provide a larger aperture than the nostrils 

 afforded. We also found him a stool to sit on. In fact, everything 

 was splendid except that, as luck would have it, there wasn't a 

 whooping crane in sight. This was what I had been afraid of. 



The next day there was a southerly wind and thick fog, so thick 

 that pictures were out of the question. In addition, the three 

 cranes of the South Family were feeding so close to the blind 

 that we couldn't make a move toward it anyway. On the third 

 day, we took a chance on the fog clearing and crept out of camp 

 in the darkness of early morning. With Bobby helping him, An- 

 dreas settled in the blind with his equipment, including some 

 sandwiches and a jug of water. He was certainly determined. We 

 watched for a while, from a safe distance, and after a little the 

 fog lifted, leaving an overcast sky. The South Family then ap- 

 peared, taking a stand directly south of camp and about a half 



