﻿The Home-life of the Red-tailed Hawk 



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by her mate. My heart beat wildly as I prepared for the climb, and the laws 

 of gravitation seemed for once to have failed, so easy was the ascent. When 

 I reached the camera I was delighted to find that the shutter had been 

 snapped. I was greatly disappointed that evening, when I developed the 

 plate, to find that the trees had swayed and thus stretched the thread, and the 

 wind, not the bird, had taken 

 the photograph, for no Hawk 

 could be found on the nega- 

 tive. Two days passed before 

 the sun shone long enough for 

 more auto-photographs. On 

 the third day I tried again. 

 Three hours after I had placed 

 the camera, I found the bird 

 at the nest. Again I found 

 the shutter released. This 

 negative was a great success, 

 and shows both birds on the 

 nest. The question immedi- 

 ately arose as to which one 

 pressed the button. A careful 

 study of the picture will show 

 the thread passing over the 

 back of the further bird, whose 

 head is modestly hidden behind 

 a limb. Two more photog- 

 raphs of one bird at the nest 

 were taken the next day, at 

 intervals of three hours. On 

 this day I further perfected 

 my apparatus and made my 

 method more certain of suc- 

 cess, by passing the thread 

 across the nest in several dif- 

 ferent directions, with screw-eyes as guides. Thus there was little chance 

 of failure if the Hawk alighted on the nest. The screw-eyes can be seen 

 in the illustrations and also the threads running through them. The birds 

 paid no attention to the thread stretched across their nest, and returned 

 to their home soon after I left the neighborhood. 



On the bright sunny morning of May 13, the first Hawklet broke 

 through his shell. He was covered with down and lay prone in the center of 

 the nest, with his head stretched forward. Two days later the other egg 

 hatched. The young were six days old when the first picture was taken. 



RED-TAIL AUTO-?HOTOGRAl'H 



Both birds in the nest 



