HUNTING BIRDS WITH CAMERA 



y 



gave a sudden spring and went up like a glass ball from 

 a trap. Even if I had tried to make the exposure, I 

 know that I should have been far too slow. I have no 

 doubt but that we could have handled her, had we tried 

 to do so. Then I set the camera, attached a thread to 

 the shutter, and hid behind a bush at a distance, to get 

 a picture of her as she came back, meanwhile letting 

 Ned go home. There I sat with eyes glued to that spot 

 in the leaves for four mortal hours. The bird did not 

 appear, the sun went down, and I had to give it up. 



Of course the eggs would be chilled and spoiled, and 

 I wondered how long she would sit on them. I made a 

 few more calls on Madam, and then neglected her 

 until the second day of May. Four neatly split shells 

 lay in the nest. The hardy eggs had hatched after all, 

 and four little Woodcocks were somewhere following 

 their devoted mother and learning to bore for worms 

 along the soft margin of the brook. 



That same year, late in July, one of my other boy 

 friends caught a young Woodcock as he returned from 

 fishing and was walking along the railroad track. The 

 bird flew up from the road-bed and alighted in the 

 grass, where it hid and allowed him to catch it. It was 

 fully fledged, but not yet very strong on the wing. 

 Ned and I kept it for a month, and had very interesting 

 times with it. We kept it in a wire chicken run, and 

 fed to it as many as 175 earth worms a day. It soon 

 got so that it would run up and take worms from our 

 hands, and sometimes it would even try to swallow my 



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