16 TRAVELS ABOUT HOME 



dowlark and, although the camera was so well hidden that 

 she returned to her nest without hesitation, I could not get 

 near enough to it to make an exposure before she left her 

 eggs. A thread over two hundred feet in length was attach- 

 ed to the shutter and was so arranged that I could reach the 

 end of it without being seen by the sitting bird; but invari- 

 ably she left her nest before I reached that part of the field 

 where the thread was placed, and I finally concluded that 

 her movements were governed by the notes of the male, who, 

 ever on guard, uttered his alarm as soon as I appeared. 



Realizing, therefore, that the birds in the grass field 

 could be studied at close range only by using the utmost 

 caution, I erected the umbrella blind at night, placing it 

 twenty feet from the nest and surrounding it with branches 

 of wild cherry. To further avoid arousing the birds' sus- 

 picions, L entered the blind at 3:80 the following morning, 

 just as the first notes of the Robins' morning song aroused 

 the birds to their matins. 



The first sign of life at the Meadowlarks' nest was noted 

 at 4:10, when the female, who had evidently passed the 

 night with her family, was seen cleaning the nest — an ad- 

 mirable way, surely, to begin the day. A moment later she 

 left the nest, flying so near the blind that I could hear the 

 rush of her wings. The blind, therefore, was accepted with- 

 out question as a feature of the landscape. It had been 

 erected without alarming the birds; Iliad entered it un- 

 seen ; it was wholly without human associations and as an 

 inanimate object did not arouse the birds' suspicions. 



At 4:25, the female returned with food and, from this 

 time until (i :34, she visited the nest sixteen times, on each 

 occasion feeding one bird and occasionally two, and with 

 one exception, always inspecting the nest and taking with 

 her the sac-enveloped excreta, which, if left, would soon 

 have rendered the nest uninhabitable. 



The male, from his favorite perch on a red cedar in the 

 neighboring fence-row, greeted the female on her first jour- 



