BIRDS WITH A HANDICAP 



I first discovered the nest by accident. Walking 

 through the woods I passed near a pile of brush, when 

 up flew a long-winged brown bird from a shaded spot 

 beside a clump of small saplings and flitted off with 

 silent flight like a bat. There were her two eggs on 

 the seventh of June the first Whippoorwill's eggs I 

 had ever found. I secured a fine picture of her by 

 placing the camera close to the nest, covered with 

 leaves, and then, with a thread attached, withdrawing 

 for an hour to let the bird come back, when I pulled the 

 thread for an exposure of one second. The male bird, 

 I found, was accustomed to roost lengthwise along the 

 trunk of a fallen sapling, where I could almost always 

 find him in daytime, but he would not let me come 

 very near. Each year after that, at about the same 

 time, I would visit these woods and flush the female 

 from her eggs, not in the same spot, but within a 

 hundred yards of it. The male always found his old 

 log again, until one day I failed to start him, and 

 scattered brown feathers showed that some hawk or 

 prowling "varmint" had probably made a meal of him. 

 Next winter the grove was cut off and no more Whip- 

 poorwills came there. 



In the cold, backward spring of 1907, on the twenty- 

 sixth of June, I was walking with a friend in a grove 

 near his home, when I heard a Scarlet Tanager chirping 

 excitedly, and also a Vireo. We altered our course and 

 went to see what was the matter. The disturber proved 

 to be a marauding jay skulking in the foliage, and the 



106 



