AMERICAN OBNITHOLOGY. 75 



Photo from life by R. H. Beebe. 

 FLICKER ROW. 



A Flicker's nest conveniently located in an apple tree awakened my 

 photographic ambitions one May day last year. As I watched both of 

 the birds going to and coming from the nest it seemed that there was 

 little to do except set up the camera and expose a plate to obtain a 

 good picture. The outer branches of the tree hung very low over the 

 stone wall beside which it stood, and completely concealed the camera 

 as well as the operator. All things considered it was an ideal place 

 from which to obtain a Flicker photograph. One bright sunny day 

 when the young were nearly ready to fly, the camera was carefully set 

 up in position and two plates were exposed when the parent birds were 

 about to enter the nest hole to feed their noisy young. I had confident- 

 ly expected to see the birds stop at the entrance and look about them 

 as usual before entering, but evidently they suspected something was 

 wrong for no sooner had they touched the tree than they dove out of 

 sight. Although somewhat doubtful of the result under the unexpect- 

 ed circumstances, the two exposures were made, but after developing 

 the plates, the only evidence that the bird had been present when the 

 bulb was pressed was a peculiar and disfiguring disturbance of the at- 

 mosphere about the entrance. The next day an attempt to gather on 

 a branch the eight young birds who were just trying to fly resulted even 

 more unsuccessfully. Instead of getting the whole eight sitting in a 

 row we had great difficulty in getting a satisfactory portrait of a single 

 one. They would scratch and bite continually and persist In their 

 attempts to use their wings, so that frequent chases across the field 

 were necessary. So much for my attempts at Flicker photography. 

 The illustrations with this were made by ^Ir. R. H. Beebe. How he 

 succeeded in keeping seven of them quiet while he took their picture 

 is a mystery to me, unless they were younger and knew less of the 

 ways of the world than mine did. 



