The Warbler in Stripes 



297 



fashion at its base. It was made of the ravellings of a chestnut's inner bark 

 and contained five young. As I was then well freighted with the camera- 

 hunter's equipment, I unburdened myself of the umbrella tent and set it up 

 within focusing distance of the nest, intending to return before twilight to see 

 if the bird had accepted it, and if so, to take some photographs from its shelter 

 on the day following. Assured before nightfall that she was again brooding 

 her young, I departed for home. 



The paragraphist delights in his 'triumphs of bird-photography,' forgetting 

 or ignoring the many baflSing defeats that made those triumphs possible. I 

 sometimes think seriously of making a scrap-book of these failures — two- 



BLACK AND WHITE WARBLER AT ENTRANCE TO NEST 

 Photographed by H. E. Tuttle 



headed monsters of ornithology, birds with no heads at all, blurred images of 

 triumphs that might have been ! My first day's photographs of this Warbler 

 contained many such failures. The nest was so well sheltered from the direct 

 light of the sun, and the shadow cast by the chestnut tree was so dense that 

 snap-shots were out of the question, while time exposures caught the bird in 

 motion and were hopelessly blurred. 



Sitting in the blind, a scant two feet from the nest itself, the first intimation 

 that I had of the Warbler's return was a peculiar scratching noise on the trunk 

 of the chestnut tree overhead. Shortly after, the male came into view, hitch- 

 ing along head-downward like a Nuthatch. He circled the tree in a gradually 

 descending spiral, approached the nest from behind the shelter of his winding 



