hegner] bird photography 207 



very few, if any, of themselves. The discovery of this fact many 

 years ago led me to invent the string method of taking pictures 

 so that I might also appear in groups with my friends. This meth- 

 od was found to be applicable to the Red-tailed Hawk shown in 

 Fig. 7, and probably could be employed for many other large birds. 



The nest shown in the picture was forty feet from the ground 

 in a birch tree. Xearby was another birch tree which afforded a 

 good place for fastening the camera on a level with the nest and 

 about six feet away. A box the size of the camera was placed 

 in this tree a few days before the photograph was taken to accus- 

 tom the birds to the presence of such an object. Then one bright 

 sunny day a camera was substituted for the box, A string was 

 passed from the shutter of the camera to the nest, and was care- 

 fully stretched across the nest through screweyes (one of which 

 can be seen in the picture) so that when the bird returned it would 

 pull down the shutter release by sitting on the string. Fig. 7 

 shows the hawk in the act of taking its own picture in this way. 



In conclusion I may say that there are few joys that equal those 

 experienced when good negatives are obtained of specially dif- 

 ficult subjects. The problems briefly discussed in this paper are 

 but a few of those that are encountered almost every day by a 

 bird photographer, but they indicate sufficiently well the sort of 

 difficulties and some of the methods of overcoming them. 

 Unkcrsity of Michigan. 



