16 TRAVELS ABOUT HOME 



dowlark and, although the camera was so well hidden that 

 she returned to her nest without hesitation, I could not get 

 near enough to it to make an exposure before she left her 

 eggs. A thread over two hundred feet in length was attach- 

 ed to the shutter and was so arranged that i could reach the 

 end of it without being seen by the sitting bird ; but invari- 

 ably she left her nest before 1 reached that part of the field 

 where the thread was placed, and i finally concluded that 

 her movements were governed by the notes of the male, who, 

 ever on guard, uttered his alarm as soon as I appeared. 



Realizing, therefore, that the birds in the grass field 

 could be studied at close range only by using the utmost 

 caution, I erected the umbrella blind at night, placing it 

 twenty feet from the nest and surrounding it with branches 

 of wild cherry. To further avoid arousing the birds ' sus- 

 picions, I entered the blind at 3 :30 the following morning, 

 just as the first notes of the Eobins ' morning song aroused 

 the birds to their matins. 



The first sign of life at the Meadowlarks ' nest was noted 

 at 4 :10, when the female, who had evidently passed the 

 night with her family, was seen cleaning the nest an ad- 

 mirable way, surely, to begin the day. A moment later she 

 left the nest, flying so near the blind that I could hear the 

 rush of her wings. The blind, therefore, was accepted with- 

 out question as a feature of the landscape. It had been 

 erected without alarming the birds ; I had entered it un- 

 seen ; it was wholly without human associations and as an 

 inanimate object did not arouse the birds' suspicions. 



At 4 :25, the female returned with food and, from this 

 time until 6 :34, she visited the nest sixteen times, on each 

 occasion feeding one bird and occasionally two, and with 

 one exception, always inspecting the nest and taking with 

 her the sac-enveloped excreta, which, if left, would soon 

 have rendered the nest uninhabitable. 



The male, from his favorite perch on a red cedar in the 

 neighboring fence-row, greeted the female on her first jour- 



