276 
they in time will give little attention to the 
photographer, who, having acquired their con- 
fidence, will be enabled to make such a series of 
small birds pictures that, from an educational 
viewpoint, shall have more than an ordinary 
value. 
If the hunter for nesting birds is a poor 
climber, and cannot crawl along the large 
branches without fear or dizziness, he may con- 
fine his work to such birds as nest low, or even 
on the ground. When the nest is located the 
apparatus should be got in readiness for an 
exposure and masked. If the old birds have 
flown, the photographer should retire some dis- 
tance, where he can watch the nest, but conceal- 
ing himself as well as he can. He must wait 
quietly and motionless as possible for the return 
of the birds. Pictures of the young birds and 
the nests will be less difficult to secure. The 
methods for getting them will suggest themselves 
when the photographer has the nests located. 
One of the most difficult problems in bird 
photography is to get good pictures of birds that 
spend their lives on and about the waiter, nesting 
in remote marshes, or in high, inaccessible 
cliffs. It requires more than ordinary enthusi- 
asm, more grit than the average hunter pos- 
sesses, to remain in chilly, filthy swamp water, 
concealed, perhaps for hours, a hundred feet or 
more from the camera, waiting for the one 
chance to pull the string or press the large bulb 
when the wildest of birds shall return to the nest 
from which it had flown on the intruder’s 
approach. 
It requires a man of extraordinary nerve to 
dangle at the end of a rope lowered over a preci- 
pice or to pick his way along the edge of some 
tall cliff, where a slip or a misstep means a 
plunge into the unknown, until he is within a 
cimera shot of his subjects, and then to success- 
fully photograph the wild sea birds there, nest- 
ing. It has been done. It can be done again. 
But this is the work for a few. 
Photographing wild animals at large, with the 
exception of those that burrow, is a harder task. 
It requires persistency, tenacity and the endur- 
ance of much hardship to successfully take the 
larger game; when in pursuit of the smaller, 
there will be many a disappointment. In either 
the chances for success are few. A few have 
succeeded. Not many will imitate or follow 
them. 
Among the animals in captivity there are 
opportunities for good workers. In some of the 
zoos, where the use of cameras is permitted, it 
is possible to make pictures that fairly well 
represent the occupants in their native wilds. 
The amateur looking for excitement can find it 
here, especially if he brush against a too 
friendly bear, approach too near an unfriendly 
RECREATION 
buffalo or get into the enclosure with an elk 
whose antlers are out of the velvet. But he can 
secure studies that would be impossible were 
the animals in their wild state. He can select 
an animal from a group, record its appearance 
at different periods and show it in its various 
moods. He will have opportunities to illustrate 
the growth and development of young animals 
He can show the rapidity of growth in the 
antlers of deer, elk and kindred animals, as well 
as the differences in their dispositions while the 
antlers are growing and when they are grown. 
As his experiences increase he will perceive new 
opportunities that might have been impossible 
were he hunting in the wilds. 
Unfortunately, there are some public zoos 
where there is a perpetually closed season for 
the camera, a condition that ought to be modi- 
fied, so that without detriment to the institution 
or annoyance to the public the photographer 
who has the requisite qualifications and who 
will not abuse the privileges conceded to him 
shall, under proper restrictions, be permitted to 
avail himself of the opportunities which the zoo 
affords. 
In outlining these few out of the many possi- 
bilities for the photographer who will hunt with 
his camera, our trouble has been, not what to 
write, but how to prune and condense what we 
would write so as to convey to the reader such 
information as shall be of the greatest value to 
him in the actual work, and to work in as much 
that might be of practical use as the limitations 
of a brief article will permit. We have made 
little reference to special apparatus, as it is our 
desire not to teach the amateur how to spend the 
most, but how to get the most out of his invest- 
ment. Experience, the best and often the most 
severe of teachers, will make known to him who 
takes up this work what additional equipment 
will enable him to facilitate his operations. 
Nature photography being yet in its infancy, 
its devotees who have become prominent and 
have given so generously of the knowledge they 
have acquired to their less fortunate fellow 
workers may yet not have had some of the 
needful experiences that some more obscure 
workers have stumbled upon. So it is desirable 
that there shall be a friendly interchange of 
experiences. This field of photographic oppor- 
tunities has too long been neglected, and has 
never received the recognition it deserves; 
while the esthetic, the impressionistic, the 
dreamy and the poetic has been boomed too 
long and too much, until it has usurped and 
monopolized those high places in photography 
of which other branches should be entitled to a 
share. There should be a reversal of things, and 
this class of pictures should be made to stand 
back, giving to the real, the natural, the solid, the 

