60 BIRD STUDIES WITH A CAMERA 
ten efforts at building card houses, which, when 
nearly completed, would be brought to ruin by an 
ill-placed card. How many times each Chickadee 
tumbled or fluttered from his perch I can not say. 
The soft, elastic net, spread beneath them, preserved 
them from injury, and bird after bird was returned 
to his place so little worse for his fall that he was 
quite ready to try it again. Finally, eight birds 
were induced to take the positions assigned them ; 
then, in assisting the ninth to his allotted place, the 
balance of a bird on either side would be disturbed, 
and down into the net they would go. 
These difficulties, however, could be overcome, 
but not so the failure of the light at the critical time, 
making it necessary to expose with a wide open lens 
at the loss of a depth of focus. 
The picture presented, therefore, does not do the 
subject justice. Nor can it tell of the pleasure with 
which each fledgeling for the first time stretched its 
wings and legs to their full extent, and preened its 
plumage with before unknown freedom. 
At the same time they uttered a satisfied little 
dee-dee-dee, in quaint imitation of their elders. 
When I whistled their well-known phe-be note, they 
were at once on the alert, and evidently expected to 
be fed. 
The birds were within two or three days of leav- 
ing the nest, and, the sitting over, the problem came 
of returning the flock to a cavity barely two inches 
in diameter, the bottom of which was almost filled 
by one bird. 
I at once confess a failure to restore anything 
like the condition in which they were found, and 
