Notes from Field and Study 



27 



A Pair of Canadian Climbers 



How easy it is to go into the woods al- 

 most any day and bring back dozens of 

 mental pictures of birds ; but lucky is the 

 ■week and fortunate the fifth of a second in 

 which we secure a really good photograph 

 of a wild bird. 



How many scores of Brown Creepers 

 have zigzagged up tree-trunks, and flown 

 down to the bases of others, just too far 

 away ! But in late September, 1899, deep 

 in the woods of Digby county. Nova Scotia, 

 a Creeper, well meriting his specific name, 

 familiaris, found a tidbit in a crevice of 

 bark, not three feet from me, and tarried 

 long enough for a quick focus and success- 

 ful exposure. Although a fairly sharp 

 picture was secured, the difficulty of clearly 

 distinguishing the bird within a space of 

 a few square inches admirably illustrates 

 the harmony in pattern of coloration 

 which exists between it and the bark on 

 "which it is resting. Two days later, I 

 watched for some time tiny moving specks 

 on my ground glass — reflections of a flock 

 of Pine Grosbeaks, uttering their exagger- 

 ated, Goldfinch-like notes in the spruce 

 above me. They showed no signs of de- 

 scending, and I was about to abandon the 



BROWN CREEPER 

 Photographed from nature by C. William Beebe 



RED-BREASTED NUTHATCH 

 Photographed from nature by C. William Beebe 



attempt to photograph them, when a Red- 

 breasted Nuthatch peered around the 

 corner of a stub in front of me. The sec- 

 ond photograph shows him as I saw him. 

 He stayed but a moment, but that short 

 space of time was fatal to any objections 

 he might have had to publicity. — By C. 

 William Beebe, Assistant Curator of 

 Birds, A^ezu York Zoological Society. 



Increased Interest in Bird Photography 



At the 1889 meeting of the American 

 Ornithologists' Union a committee was ap- 

 pointed to solicit the loan of lantern slides 

 showing wild birds, their nests and eggs, 

 to be exhibited at the next Congress of 

 the Union, when about two dozen slides 

 were shown. 



At the meeting of the A. O. U., held in 

 Philadelphia in November last, although 

 no effort had been made to secure papers 

 illustrated by slides, between two and three 

 hundred were exhibited, and many others 

 were not shown for lack of time. 



