340 



Bird - Lore 



Late in the following afternoon, I began to approach cautiously toward the 

 nest on House Island, going inch by inch with increasingly deliberate move- 

 ments. In this manner I was enabled to set up a tripod only fifteen feet from 

 the nest, focus the camera on the sitting bird, and secure a 20-second exposure. 

 Now and then a pugnacious Gull, whose young were probably somewhere near, 

 created a diversion by swooping past my head with a hair-raising swish of 

 stiffly set wings, and uttering its angry cry, a-ka-ka-kak; but the Merganser 

 appeared little concerned. It was not until I had moved still closer, and was 



AMERICAN MERGANSER'S NEST AND EGGS, HOUSE ISLAND, LAKE CHAMPLAIN, N. Y. 



JULY 10, 1910 



about to make another exposure, that the bird decided to seek safer quarters. 

 She scurried swiftly to the edge of the bank and launched into the air, dropping 

 down close to the water at first, but not settling on its surface until a consider- 

 able distance offshore. 



The warden told us of a somewhat different manner in which he had seen 

 the bird take her departure from the nest. She would start, he said, in a rather 

 steeply inclined course from the top of the bank, strike the water just beyond 

 the shore-line, and rise up at once (doubtless with a vigorous use of feet as well 

 as of wings) to fly off farther over the lake. This interesting performance on 



