PROFESSIONAL FLY-CATCHING 



We spent the rest of that day with other birds and 

 the next morning went to another nest site, in a pasture 

 through which flows a large meadow brook. There 

 were scattered clumps of alders, some of them of good 

 height, but plenty of small ones, too. This nest, how- 

 ever, was not in an alder, though close to some, but in 

 some other sort of bush, two feet from the ground. It 

 contained four eggs, slightly incubated. They were 

 warm, but the shy bird had slipped away. Setting the 

 camera, well concealed, in the next bush, for a short 

 timed exposure, with thread attached, we went off for 

 over an hour to give the bird a chance to return. The 

 Alder Flycatcher is so very shy that I had my doubts 

 as to whether she would ever return to the nest with a 

 camera near it. 



When we returned, I crept up within twenty yards 

 of the nest to where I had left the spool and pulled the 

 thread. The eggs were warm, so the bird was doubt- 

 less on when the shutter opened. Yes, and to my 

 horror it was still open and the plate spoiled ! Taking 

 apart the shutter, I found that some of the delicate 

 mechanism had collapsed and that photography was 

 all up for the present. Luckily the jeweler in town was 

 able to repair it, and early the next morning, my last 

 day there, I was at the nest. It was cloudy so I had 

 to allow for a half -second exposure. 



After setting the camera I made a slight opening in 

 the bushes so that I was able to watch the nest with my 

 strong Zeiss glass from quite a distance. To my de- 



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