May, 1909 
A PROBLEM IN INDETERMINATES 
87 
directed to me. Perhaps you know what it means to be a markt man in your 
community — your hobby is your brand, so to speak. Well, I was branded, and so 
the stranger soon rounded me up; and in our first talk-fest we arranged to get 
afield, for the stranger actually wanted to get some pictures of nests of western 
birds. Strange, isn’t it, how peculiarly his dementia ran, poor man ? — wanted 
to get pictures of birds’ nests. At any rate it turned out that I could accommo- 
date him; peculiar, wasn’t it, that a poor demented fellow who wanted to photo- 
graph birds’ nests should straightaway find some one who could tell him where the 
nests were ? 
To be candid I must say that I had been out over the prairie the day before, 
and had chanced on a nest of Lark Bunting just ripe for photographing, so I was 
sure of that for him anyway. Moreover I had aroused a male Curlew into swoop- 
ing angrily at me, and I knew what that meant. You understand, then, that when 
NEST AND EGGS OF LONG-BILLED CURLEW 
I told my new-found friend I could show him something to photograph, I felt sure 
of delivering the goods. So we went afield. 
My friend didn’t know much about birds, for his hobby was pictures. A nest 
of the Lark Bunting was to him as great a prize as a nest of the Curlew. Not so 
with me, however, and on our way across the bench I explained to him what great 
opportunity had befallen him; for it is an opportunity to photograph a nest of the 
Curlew, if one has just dropt into Montana and never even saw a Curlew. In 
fact, it is not often that a tenderfoot is granted an opportunity to gaze upon one of 
the greatest treasures of our great Treasure State, a nest of the Curlew; such an 
experience is reserved only for the initiated — it is one of the rites of the thirty- 
third degree of bird nesting, so to speak. All this I explained in fullest detail to 
my fellow-hobbyist, and be it said to his credit that he appeared to grasp the value 
of the opportunity. 
My first objective point was a solitary fence-post, marking the stalking ground 
