An Island Eden 



i«i 



doubtless would not have succeeded in rearing its family. But in an 

 environment where bird enemies are happily absent, the ground -building- 

 birds are as safe as those nesting in the tree-tops. Environment, then, is 

 the mold in which habit is cast. Indeed, the ground -builders are in less 

 danger than those birds which build true to type, since the trees to which,, 

 year after year, the birds come may fall, with consequent disaster to the 

 nest. When the nest is placed in a small cedar it eventually becomes 

 larger than its support, which often gives way beneath it. The birds then 



PHOTOGRAPHING A FISH -HAWK 

 June I, igoi 



evince their attachment to a certain spot by constructing a new home in 

 the ruins of the old one. 



One pair of Fish-hawks had placed a cart-load of sticks and sea- 

 weed, constituting the greater part of their building material, on the roof 

 of a small 'yoke-house' standing well out in a field, which, when I first 

 saw it, was green with young rye. This house was evidently the only 

 place offering concealment from which the bird might be photographed on 

 its home. A camera was therefore erected some forty feet away, a tube 

 run to the house, and I entered what was, in a sense, the subcellar of the 

 structure above, sending my assistant to a neighboring ridge, whence he 

 was to warn me of the bird's return. Time after time, under these con- 

 ditions, the bird came back within a minute of my companion's departure; 

 but, when going alone to photograph her, in the same manner, on the 

 following day, she showed the utmost caution in returning to her inter- 



