HUNTING BIRDS WITH CAMERA 



twenty of them, right from the very place I had so 

 carefully examined. 



How well protected they are by their colors I once 

 had a fine chance to see. A single bird flushed before 

 the hunting dogs, and took to a patch of scrub pines. 

 I went in to look for it, and, as I was standing where 

 the shade was dense, but the ground clear of under- 

 growth, I happened to see it lying flat on the ground on 

 the smooth carpet of pine needles only two or three 

 steps from me. Before I had time to get my camera 

 ready it realized that it was discovered and flew off. 

 So I got no picture, and, indeed, had never shot quail 

 with the camera. But opportunities came, at length. 

 Mrs. Robert White, like the old woman of shoe-resi- 

 dence fame, usually has a great many children. She 

 raises a big batch of them in June, and then often tries 

 it again in July and August. She is apt to nest in hay 

 fields, and the mowing-machine discovers this second 

 nesting. So one day, late in July, a farmer told me 

 that he had found a nest. Sure enough, in the corner 

 of his field by the stone wall was a nest with sixteen 

 eggs, in a clump of grass which the kind man had left 

 to protect them. It was easy enough to photograph 

 the eggs, but the mother bird was afraid of the camera, 

 so I had to take it away without getting her picture. I 

 made another visit very soon with Ned, and was just 

 in the nick of time, for fourteen of the sixteen eggs had 

 hatched, and the cunning little things which looked for 

 all the world like little brown-leghorn chickens, only 



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