32 BIRDS 



graphic exposure of a rare bird has been made and you 

 enter your dark-room to develop the plate with a feeling 

 of some uncertainity as to the results I know of nothing 

 that gives greater thrills than beholding, in the dim, soft, 

 ruby light, the chemical transformation taking place on 

 that plate, as on its blank, cream-colored pictureless sur- 

 face an image slowly grows into an exact likeness of the 

 bird, just as your eyes and the lens of the camera saw it 

 at the instant of exposure. No skinning of the lifeless 

 bird and no taxidermy can produce such thrills or life- 

 like reproductions. 



It is an easy matter to take your photographic out- 

 fit and under favorable light conditions secure a good 

 landscape picture. But when it comes to making a good 

 photograph of a living bird in its native haunts many 

 entirely different problems confront the camera man. 

 "Birds have no interest in any device that assists in their 

 identification, and due recognition should be given their 

 protest by avoiding all unnecessary exposure of their 

 eggs and young to unfavorable climatic and other dan- 

 gers. Undue exposure to the burning rays of the sun may 

 prove fatal to a young bird, or the fertility of eggs may 

 be so destroyed." 



In after years, in reviewing your labors, your 

 thoughts will be of light values, time of exposure, de- 

 velopers and good pictures, and not of the size of the shot, 

 the distance from the gun and the mangled bodies of 

 birds. 



I detest the idea and practice of photographing dead 

 bodies of birds, yet there are occasions when one is jus- 

 tified by force of circumstances in resorting to the pro- 

 cedure. One of our most readable books on birds has its 

 beauty marred and its value depreciated by the illustra- 

 tions, which, without exception, are photographs of mum- 

 mified museum specimens. The listless eyes, the rickety 

 legs, the moth-eaten appearance and the unnatural sur- 

 roundings and postures on pedestal perches, all proclaim 

 in pathetic language a funeral oration on the defenseless 

 original owners of the arsenated skins. (Fig. 2.) 



No country has ever enacted a law restricting ' ' cam- 

 era shooting" of any of its birds, at any season, and in 

 unlimited numbers. By painstaking care and persistent 



