Page:Bird-lore Vol 01.djvu/51

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
The Camera as an Aid in the Study of Birds
37

in devices. Arranging the camera as already described, omitting the green hood in this instance, as it would have been worse than useless, we retired entirely from the field, which fortunately lay on a gently sloping hillside. From our distant retreat we watched, with field-glass in hand, the maneuvers of the mother bird. The experience of the preceding evening had evidently helped to prepare the way, for after only brief delay the anxious bird began running in a great spiral steadily converging to the central point. Every clod of earth or little mound in the path was mounted and, with much craning of neck and turning of head, the dreadful engine glistening in the sunshine was closely scrutinized from all sides, but as it was motionless, it probably was regarded as some new-fangled contrivance for cultivating corn, of finer build than the hoes, rakes, and other implements left by the men in the field. Once satisfied, she made a last quick run directly between the legs of the tripod, and stood erect over her treasures. A long trolling-line, procured at a neighboring farmhouse, had been attached to the lever arm releasing the shutter, as our seventy-five feet of tubing was not half long enough. Creeping to the end of the line, a quick pull made the exposure, 125 of a second, with wide open stop and rapid plate. Pulling up the slack of the line seemed to startle the bird more than the click of the shutter, and after repeating this procedure several times we were altogether uncertain as to whether the bird had been caught at all; and as it was impossible, there in the field, to follow the advice of an interested farmer spectator, who insisted that we “ought to look at them there plates and see what we had before going further,” we cast about for some surer method. Carefully looking over the ground, I found that some seventy-five feet from the nest there was a shallow depression just deep enough to entirely conceal a man lying prone on the soft, ploughed ground. So the rubber tube was substituted for the line and the bulb end carried up the slope to the little hollow. As it would be impossible from this position to see the bird, and as we had discovered that a low whistle or noise caused her to leave the nest at once, some method of signaling had to be arranged. The trolling line suggested a way, as we found that it would reach readily from the bulb in the hollow to the edge of the field. So, attaching one end of it to my wrist, I took my position flat on the ground in the middle of the field, with a hot noon sun pouring down over-head, and awaited the signal,—a vigorous jerk on the trolling line, to be given by Mr. Gleason, who from a distance was watching with a glass the movements of our unwilling sitter. The signal soon came, and these complicated and rather juvenile tactics proved so successful