4 BIRD STUDIES WITH A CAMERA 



briglitened by the fact that this iw not a picture of 

 what has been but of what is ! 



The camera tlius opens the door to a field of sport 

 previously closed to those who love birds too much 

 to find pleasure in killing them; to whom Bob- 

 White's ringing whistle does not give rise to mur- 

 derous speculations as to the number in his family, 

 but to an echo of the season's joy which his note 

 voices. They therefore have a new incentive to take 

 them o\it of doors; for liowever much we love Na- 

 ture for Nature's sake, there are few of us whose 

 pleasure in an outing is not intensified by securing 

 some definite, lasting result. 



We are not all poets and seers, finding sufficient 

 reward for a hard day's tramp in a sunset glow or 

 the song of a bird. Enj(_iy these things as we may, 

 who would not like to perpetuate the one or the 

 otlier in some tangiljle form ':: 



And here we have one of the reasons for the col- 

 lecting of liii'ds and eggs long after the collector's 

 needs are satisfied. He goes on duplicating and 

 reduplicating merely to appease the almost univer- 

 sal desire to possess any admired although useless 

 object. Once let him ai)preciate, however, the pleas- 

 ure of hunting with a camera, the greater skill re- 

 quired, and the infinitely greater value of the results 

 to be obtained, and he will have no further use for 

 gun, climbing irons, and egg drill. 



FuTthermore, the camera hunter possessi>s the ad- 

 vantage over the so-called true s])ortsman, in that all 

 is game that falls to his gun ; ther(^ is not a l)ird too 

 small or too tauK^ to b(^ unworiliy of his arttention ; 

 nor are there seasonal rc^strictions to 1)0 observed, 



