Jh-itish Birds. 
201 
branch,e& to in;ikt> it inconspicuous. Within ten minutes of my 
hiding, the old birds came back and flitted around among the nut 
boughs for a few minutes before one alighted on the edge of the 
nest, a fat green grub in its beak, and all the while spreading its 
tail and wings and uttering a call to its young ; on the old birds' 
arrival with food five little necks shot up as one, and each time 
two only seemed to be fed, the old bird removing any excrement 
which she swallowed, but whether she disgorged it afterwartls or 
not I was unable to see. 
About every ten minutes one or the other of the old birds 
came with food which the young always seemed ready for, after 
which they retii t'd to the bottom of the nest till the next course 
was In-ought. 
It was HO dark in this glade that with a telephoto lens I 
had to give no less than six seconds exposure, and the risk of 
movement was very great, so much so, that out of the first dozen 
plates exposed only one was a complete success. 
Two out of the five young I hand-reared, and I hope to re- 
produce prints of them later. 
Greater Whitethroat (Sylvia clnera, Bech.) : This 
again was a rather difficult subject, although the nest, which was 
among a clump of nettles at the outside of a hedge and built of 
dried grass and bents and lined with horse haii", was in a much 
better light, and by means of bending a few leaves here and there 
the sun was let through and enabled me to get a snapshot of the 
old bird just after feeding the young. ' 
The food was brought in much the same manner already 
described in the notes on the Nightingale, only the old White- 
throats crept through from the Ijack of the nest. The food con- 
sisted chiefly of green caterpillars and a small white moth. 
Yellow Bunting {Ember iza citrinella. Linn.) : Our 
next photograph was much easier to obtain. One reason for this 
was that right opposite the nest was already a large clump of 
bushes among which the tent was placed and a telephoto lens used 
at a distance of about two yards, which gives a much larger pic- 
ture than in the two former cases. 
The old birds too were not half so shy, remaining for some 
time after the shutter had been released. The nest contained only 
two young, which I believe is rather unusual, and was built of 
grass, roots, and moss, in a low l)ush. 
