298 Bird - Lore 



stair and stopped for a moment to reconnoitre, with his eye on the lens of the 

 camera, before making his final advance. Here, had I focused on this spot, I 

 might easily have pictured him, but I had chosen the nest itself as the objective 

 and could only wait. All my pictures of the male were failures — he was a too 

 swiftly moving sprite to fall a victim to an exposure whose recording glimpse 

 had been retarded from penetrating the shadows where he had hidden his nest. 

 More nervous in action, he was more fearless than his mate, and it was often 

 his arrival with food for the young and his immediate decision to feed them 

 that put a stop to the dilatory tactics of the female, who was inclined to perch 

 aloft, voicing a monotonous protest to the publicity which I was giving to her 

 domestic arrangements. Yet it was her indecision that gave me my only 

 successful pictures. 



After she had fed the young and had given them a most thorough inspection, 

 she was loathe to leave; perhaps, having once braved the camera's eye, she was 

 content to remain under its harmless gaze; perhaps she hated to abandon her 

 offspring to its baleful glare; she may have been reflective or lazy; at all events 

 she delayed her departure. With an eye cast occasionally skyward, or benev- 

 olently fixed on her fledglings, she whiled away the time. It was during these 

 lapses that the lids of the camera's inner eye were silently opened, and, on a 

 movement on her part, as silently closed. 



In the meantime, the more industrious male was making three food trips 

 to her one. The fare which he provided was composed entirely of small green 

 caterpillars, cut up into half-lengths. The only peculiarity which distinguished 

 these Black and White Warblers from others of their kind, aside from the faith- 

 ful simulation of a crippled wing, was the habit before mentioned of flying 

 directly to the nest tree and sliding down it, like inverted firemen hurrying to 

 a blaze. 



A Red-shouldered Hawk nested in a great pine tree whose shadow fell close 

 to my tent's edge, but this freebooter hunted far from home, and the tenants 

 of the chestnut tree were safe. 



