7424 Birds. 



easily be beut in any direction, so as to be effective under all circum- 

 stances, or let the course of the hole in which you are about to intro- 

 duce one be what it may ; thus, if it be directly downward, the 

 direction from the mouth to the bottom of the bowl, as it may be 

 termed, of your instrument should be, and by a bend you may in a 

 moment make it become, almost parallel with the handle, while if the 

 hole should take a horizontal direction the bowl must be made to form 

 a right angle or nearly so with the handle, which can also be effected 

 in an instant. If the handle should not be found long enough to 

 reach the bottom of a hole, a piece of stick of the required length may 

 be attached thereto by means of a bit of string, a supply of which, with 

 a knife, you would do well always to carry with you. 



These instruments are not only useful in abstracting eggs from 

 holes in trees or walls, but, lashed to a stiff rod or slender pole of 

 sufficient length, they are of use in obtaining specimens from nests of 

 birds of aquatic habits situated among flags, &c., growing in rivers, 

 lakes or ponds, which it might be difficult to obtain in any other way. 

 I invariably adopt this plan in taking the eggs of the little grebe, 

 moorhen, coot and some other species, unless the nest should chance 

 to be so near the margin as to be within reach of one's arm. 



Occasionally it happens that nests are situated in pines and other 

 trees, the lower part of whose trunks, to the height, it may be, of twenty 

 or thirty feet, are destitute of limbs. Once up to the limbs the ascent 

 may be easy enough, but the difficulty lies in reaching them, for the 

 trunk may be too large in size, and too slippery withal, to allow 

 you to climb up it : to meet the difficulty I provide myself with a 

 strong cord or light rope, not precisely the kind of thing by means of 

 which Romeo mounted up to Juliet's chamber, — " cords made like a 

 tackled stair," — but simply a rope in which 1 form a series of loops : 

 each loop should be so large as to allow you easily to " put your foot 

 into it." They should be about two feet apart, and in number sufficient 

 to enable you to attain the object you have in view, at whatever height 

 that may happen to be. The unlooped portion of the rope must be 

 long enough to reach from the limb or branch it is passed over, to the 

 foot of the tree, where it must be secured by some means, unless you 

 chance to have an assistant with you who can hold it while you ascend 

 and descend. The way I pass the rope over the branch — which, in 

 order that one may not be swung about, or go whirling round in a 

 manner the very reverse of agreeable, I always take care shall be at a 

 point close to its junction with the trunk — is this : I attach a piece of 

 string of sufficient length to the end of the rope, then tie a stone or 



