WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS 



and green like the other, and was used just the same. Four ex- 

 posures were made on the male bird there before that device was 

 removed. Three of them were fit to use, two were better than 

 I hoped for, and one was unaccountably foreshortened so that it 

 was a failure. After my success with the lemon tree, which I 

 thought so like an orange as to answer, that perch was changed 

 almost every day to give a thread of continuity to my illustration. 



A cardinal is a strenuous lover, his attachment to his mate be- 

 ing unusually strong and his fighting capacity equal in force to 

 his affections. He shows no mercy on a rival and spares no atten- 

 tion to his mate. He is a splendid singer and vastly proud of his 

 vocal ability. I know of no other bird that, in the stress of 

 mating- fever rocks, trills, lifts his wings, turns his head, and so 

 displays his passion and his power. As never before I found in 

 him material for studies which were reproductions of character 

 indeed. Yet do the best I could, my likenesses of this vivid bird 

 always seem pale and small to me when I think of the pictures 

 he made there in the sumac, living out his life of joy and freedom. 



All the studies one could wish of young could be secured about 

 these nests as easily as those of any other birds, but Cardinal 

 young are a special temptation. There is lure in their deep hazel 

 eyes, flaring crests, important carriage and their red-tinted feath- 

 ering. A pair of them makes a picture hard to surpass in attrac- 

 tiveness. 



I have followed several pairs of birds throughout one season 

 and made more or less complete series of them, but the Cardinal 

 is the only bird I have followed season after season and through 

 days and weeks of unceasing labor of the hardest sort, and I have 

 done it in the hope that what I might write and tell would work 



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