170 WILD NATURE'S WAYS. 



The building of a birch and hazel screen 

 behind which to hide the camera enabled me 

 finally to overcome the bird's suspicions, and 

 secure an exposure just before the breaking of a 

 heavy thunderstorm. 



I have been singularly unlucky during the 

 last two breeding seasons in my efforts to photo- 

 graph a male red-backed shrike or butcher bird 

 in the act of feeding his offspring. 



In July, 1902, I found a nest in a thin, 

 straggling hedge, containing such a well-feathered 

 brood of young ones that I deemed it expedient, 

 on two heads, to sit up all night. The advanced 

 stage of development reached by the chicks made 

 it plain that there was not a moment to be lost, 

 and feeding at dawn is generally fast and furious, 

 and consequently fuller of chances than ' later 

 periods of the day. I was too late, however, for 

 directly I fixed up my paraphernalia the pert 

 little shrikes left their old home one by one, in 

 response to the earnest invitations of their food- 

 bearing parents, and I had to content myself 

 with vignettes of them seated on elderberry and 

 other sprays in the dilapidated hedgerow. 



Upon returning from the Highlands in the 

 corresponding month of last year, and sitting 

 down to write the present work, I was one day 

 astonished to see a splendid male butcher bird 

 revolving his tail on the uppermost of twenty- 



