A Crow Study 



115 



the camera, I nailed up a small wooden box in its place, wrapping it with 

 burlap sacking. This dummy camera I left for the birds to become ac- 

 customed to. 



A week later I returned, substituted a real camera for the dummy, covered 

 it with the burlap, and attached to the shutter a thread leading off for fifty yards 

 to some treeS; behind which I hid. The Crows returned, but, seeing me, would 

 not go near the nest. So, after waiting for half an hour, I left the thread and hid 

 under a bridge some distance off. Soon the Crows were back again, and before 

 I had been hidden fifteen minutes, one of them disappeared where I knew the 



CROW ON NEST 



nest must be. Waiting another quarter-hour for her to get well settled, I walked 

 slowly up to the end of the thread and pulled. The Crow flew off at the click 

 of the shutter, so I knew I had my picture. The green afternoon light was too 

 far gone for further attempts, but development showed that they were not neces- 

 sary. 



It was four days before I visited my Crows again. On April 25, I found 

 that the eggs had hatched, after an incubation of sixteen or eighteen days. One 

 egg had disappeared and four Httle Crows lay in the nest, an ugly, confused 

 mass of bare, pink flesh, covered only with a little down on head, back, and 



