Photographing a Ruffed Grouse 
By JOHN WOODCOCK, Minnedosa, Man, 
With a photograph by the author 
N May 24, 1908, I took my camera, a 4 x 5 Pony Premo, with an ordi- 
() nary cheap lens, and set out for a bluff which I knew to be a favorite 
resort of Ruffed Grouse. The morning had been dark and gloomy with 
rain at intervals, but about 3 p.m. the clouds cleared away and the sun shone out, 
though not quite so brightly as was desirable for snapshot photography. 
As soon as I reached the woods I heard a Grouse drumming, and soon came 
upon him standing on a large decayed log. Walking slowly up, I seated myself 
about thirty yards away and awaited developments. For about five minutes he 
hardly moved, then suddenly sat down on the log, and, with tail expanded and 
head thrust forward, began to flap his wings, slowly at first, but after three or 
four strokes moving them so rapidly as to make them almost invisible. The 
wings were held so as to beat forward and not down toward the log. 
As a bank of dark clouds was coming up from the west, I had no time to lose 
so fastened the camera, with ball-and-socket clamp, to a tree about nine feet from 
the log, and attaching twenty-five feet of tubing with a bicycle pump on one end, 
and setting the shutter at one-half a second, with diaphragm at U. S. 8, I went 
away for a time to give the bird a chance to return. 
In about half an hour I returned, to find the Grouse again drumming. I 
managed to creep up to the tubing, and just as he was preparing to drum again 
I worked the pump, but the click of the shutter did not disturb him at all. 
eRe = ~ 
GULLS AND CORMORANTS 
Photographed by Mrs. Gardner F. G. Wells, at Avalon Island, Cal., May, 10907 
(11) 
