﻿154 Bird -Lore 



She never came near enough to do any damage, but always changed her 

 course when a few feet away and veered off a little to the right. Her 

 anxiety was not even allayed when I climbed down out of the tree, but she 

 must needs follow me a mile and a half on my way home. 



As I approached the hill on April II, I could see a Hawk on the dead 

 oak limb in exactly the same place where he was when I went away six days 

 before. He screamed once, perhaps as a warning, spread his wings and 

 sailed out over me, turning his head as he flew to get a better view of me. I 

 could see the tail of the female extending from over the side of the nest, 

 but she valiantly stuck to her post until I had climbed part way up the hill. 

 Then, with a few great flaps of her wings, she hastened out of gunshot, 

 and, circling overhead as on my former visit, she screamed with uneasiness 

 and anger while I climbed the fifty feet of birch tree to the nest and 

 examined the two eggs which lay side by side in the little grooves they had 

 made for themselves in the lining. I left the Hawks still in possession of 

 their beauties, but returned in a few days with a box which looked like a 

 camera. This box I placed in a neighboring birch tree ten feet away, as 

 nearly on a level with the nest as decayed limbs and small branches would 

 permit. This was to accustom the Hawks to the presence of a camera. 



A week later, I again visited the nest, but this time I brought the real 

 camera and fastened it to a limb in place of the dummy, by means of a 

 clamp such as is used by bicycle riders to fasten cameras to the handle-bars 

 of bicycles. I intended to work the shutter of the camera with a thread 

 from a hiding-place behind a tree some distance away. But here I encoun- 

 tered a serious difficulty, for Hawks are so sharp of eye that I could not 

 remain close enough to the tree to work the shutter of the camera without 

 frightening them away. 



Some ingenious photographer has made many interesting pictures by 

 placing a camera and flash -lamp near the runways of deer and other animals. 

 A string which lights the flash -lamp and snaps the shutter is touched 

 by any wild creature which walks along the path. In a similar manner 

 I decided to try to make the Hawk his own photographer, — an auto- 

 photographer. I attached a thread to the camera shutter, laid it lightly over 

 the nest and tied it to a limb on the other side. At first I stretched the 

 thread too taut, the added weight of my body bent the tree over, and 

 when I climbed down it sprang back a few inches', sufficient to release the 

 shutter and so prematurely expose the plate. In this way four plates were 

 ruined before the correct length of thread was determined. When I had 

 arranged everything at the nest, I visited the domain of another Red -tail a 

 mile up the creek, and placed another camera in a similar position close to 

 the nest in a large elm tree. This bird did not return to her home duties 

 until the camera was removed. 



On my return to the first nest, the Hawk flew off and was quickly joined 



