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the nest be? I knew the country pretty 
well, through many a hard tramp. For 
several miles about it was practically a 
wilderness, more or less stripped by lum- 
bermen. About a mile and a half away 
was the likeliest place for ‘‘Cooper’s,” a 
grove of rather tall pines. To reach it by 
team I had to follow a crooked, circuitous 
logging road. At last I reached the grove, 
and, driving through it, [used my eyes. A 
piece of white down lay on the ground, 
right in the track. I stopped the horse, 
and peered about carefully. Some rods 
back from the road there seemed to be 
some sort of a nest up one of the pines. As 
I hitched the horse, a large bird darted out 
of the grove. The nest, some thirty feet up 
a white pine, fairly bristled with waving 
white down, which also clung to the 
branches all about. I fairly sprang up the 
tree, and gloated over the four warm blu- 
ish-white eggs that belonged to no other 
than a Cooper’s hawk—unless to me! 
The camera is a splendid adjunct to the 
delights of the new hawking. First, and 
easiest, one can secure valuable pictorial 
records of the nesting-sites of each kind of 
hawk, as illustrating their habits. — Por- 
trait studies of these birds in captivity are 
interesting. Many are trapped by farmers, 
and young from the nest may be used. 
More difficult is the photographing of 
nests and their contents in tall trees, in- 
volving excitement and danger to life and 
limb. Hardest of all is the photographing 
of the exceedingly wary adult in freedom, 
either in flight or in the act of incubation. 
One day, about the middle of May, I 
was crawling through a thicket of moun- 
tain laurel in some dense woods, when I 
heard, from beyond me, the shrill whistle 
of a broad-winged hawk. The bird was 
flying about uneasily, alighting here and 
there, evidently anxious over my approach 
to its nest, which I soon found in the top 
crotch of a chestnut tree, about forty feet 
from the ground. Strapping on the climb- 
ing-irons, and making the ascent, I found 
that there were four eggs in the nest, the 
only instance which I have personally 
known of the broad-wing laying more than 
three eggs. 
Naturally, I was anxious to photograph 
this rarity. The present occasion was in- 
opportune, for, just as I was climbing the 
tree, a heavy thunder shower, which had 
been threatening, burst forth in torrents of 
The New Sport of “ Hawking” 
rain. But the situation of the nest was the 
greatest drawback. Like many chestnut 
trees, this one ended in a fork of several 
slender and partly decayed branches. ‘The 
nest occupied the whole of this crotch, 
leaving no good way to get up over it, or, if 
one did so, any safe foothold above the 
nest. 
However, it was a great temptation to 
try, so I returned on the last day of May, 
accompanied by my little son. With cam- 
era slung over my shoulder, I reached the 
nest, and, after quite a struggle, placed a 
foot in the fork beside it, and stood up 
there. Even then the prospect looked 
dubious, but finally I found lodgment for 
one foot on one of the stubs above the 
nest, straddling across with the other to 
the next stub, where, holding on with one 
hand, I proceeded to work. First I had to 
screw my bolt into a branch, then take out 
the camera from the case, open it, adjust 
the clamp, and attach it to the bolt. The 
focusing of the instrument, with head 
under the cloth, looking down between my 
legs, I found to be the ordeal most trying 
to the nerves, conscious as I was of the in- 
security of my position and the conse- 
quences of the least slip or dizziness. But 
by a strong effort of will I went steadily 
through the performance, and after three- 
quarters of an hour, reached terra firma 
with four good plates as my sufficient re- 
ward. 
That same season I found a pair of red- 
tails nesting in their favorite location, in 
this rough hill-country of western Con- 
necticut, high up on an enormous rock oak 
growing up from under a steep ledge In 
early June, when the two young were get- 
ting quite large,I went to see what I could 
do with them. The thickness of the tree, 
together with its rough, scaly bark, made 
it practically unclimbable, except with con- 
siderable danger. I found it best to ascend 
a smaller oak, growing a little farther up 
the ledge, and on this reached the level of 
the nest, about twenty feet away from it. 
By actual count, I was up that tree four 
hours and a half. Much of the time was 
spent in rigging my telephoto apparatus. 
Unfortunately a strong wind arose, with 
frequent gusts that set trees and camera 
waving like the masts of a ship at sea. The 
telephotographs proved worthless, but I 
secured some fair results with the single 
combination of the doublet lens, showing 
