Making Bird Friends 



II 



alight on our hands when we were on horseback; and once one of the 

 Chickadees ate from our hands while we were in a canoe near the 

 shore of the lake. 



When we began to photograph them, we found that it took quite as 

 much patience as taming them. The accompanying photographs were 

 taken with a tripod camera with the lens a little less than three feet 

 from the bird. In the first, I focused on the knothole in which we had 

 placed suet, and then waited for a Nuthatch to come. The camera 

 being so near, however, the click of the diaphragm shutter startled him, 



A BIRD FRIEND 



and he would move quickly enough to make a good picture impossible. 

 I, consequently, had to make a business of clicking the shutter without 

 exposing plates until he became used to the sound. This required time, 

 and, it is needless to say, I spoiled more than one plate trying for pictures 

 before I succeeded in getting a satisfactory one. I finally used an extra 

 shutter for the "clicking," which enabled me to take the picture 

 immediately after getting the bird used to the sound. 



On March 27 we discovered one pair of our Nuthatches excavating 

 a hole in a dead upright branch of a large sugar maple, some thirty or 

 forty feet from the ground. As near as we could tell, the female did 

 all the work, and she was a very busy bird until the nest was com- 

 pleted, — first carrying out chips and then carrying in the nesting material. 



