104 HOW TO STUDY BIRDS 



iment, but on the lyth, when the cowbird's egg and 

 one other had hatched, I set the camera near, under a 

 low bower of leaves. When I returned the parent 

 was just leaving the nest, standing at the entrance, and 

 I got a nice picture before she darted off at the sound 

 of the shutter. She was not on when I returned 

 again, so I took the camera away. 



On the edge of these same oak woods I often 

 heard a redstart singing near a path. Several times 

 I looked vainly for its nest. One day, as I ap- 

 proached, I heard it sing, and followed it up. The 

 sound came from a young oak beside the path, and 

 as I reached the tree there was the male redstart sing- 

 ing lustily just below his nest, on which the female 

 was sitting. It was a pretty cup, saddled in the main 

 fork of the slender oak, about a dozen feet up. It 

 blended nicely with the bark, and yet from one direc- 

 tion it was in plain sight of the path along which I 

 had frequently walked. How could I have been so 

 blind! There were four small young in the nest, 

 showing that incubation had begun during the last 

 days of May. 



The trees were too slender to allow setting up the 

 camera by the nest, so on June iyth I brought my 

 reflex camera and, standing in the path, took snap- 

 shots of the parents feeding the young, as they came 

 and went without fear. On the 2ist, when the young 

 were quite well fledged, I took a couple of them from 

 the nest, posed them before the camera, and took pic- 

 tures as the mother fed them. Bold as the father 





