﻿j&trli = Lore 



A BI-MONTHLY MAGAZINE 

 DEVOTED TO THE STUDY AND PROTECTION OF BIRDS 



Official Organ of the Audubon Societies 



Vol. VIII January — February, 1906 No. 1 



An Experience in Tree-top Photography 

 Young Broad -winged Hawks at Home in Southern Connecticut 



By BERT FRANCIS CASE, Middle Haddam. Conn. 



Illustrated by the author 



THE following account of my first attempt at tree-top photography 

 may interest the readers of Bird-Lore who are ambitious in a like 

 direction, as well as express something of the real pleasure of the 

 experience, — except in the ending. 



We found the nest May 3, by chance, as it was the migration season 

 and we' were out looking for new arrivals, especially among the Warblers. 

 What called our attention to the nest was the few downy feathers we saw 

 clinging to the outside. Otherwise we should have passed it by as a last 

 year's Crow's nest. It was that in a way, as originally it had been built by 

 Crows, to be later occupied by squirrels, and, last of all, taken possession of 

 by a pair of Broad -winged Hawks. The Hawks had brought a small 

 amount of new material, rearranged the old, and thus, with a minimum 

 amount of work, fashioned a nest that met all practical needs and was 

 evidently as satisfactory as though they had themselves laid the foundation 

 sticks. 



The nest was in a beech tree about thirty feet from the ground, securely 

 placed in the. crotch formed by the dividing of the main trunk into several 

 good-sized branches. 



The old collecting instinct was present, I will confess, with the first 

 sight of the three eggs. Nesting Broad -wings were somewhat rare in Con- 

 necticut, and oological price-lists quoted the eggs at $1.50 each. But this 

 was only for a moment. The newly developed camera instinct soon reas- 

 serted itself. 



My next visit to the nest was May 8, when I went prepared to begin 

 my series of camera studies and realize some of my dreams of doing some- 

 thing worth while in nature photography. My ardor cooled somewhat when 

 the very real difficulty of securing the legs of the tripod to various limbs of 



