Bird-Lore
A BI-MONTHLY MAGAZINE
DEVOTED TO THE STUDY AND PROTECTION OF BIRDS
Official Organ of the Audubon Societies
| Vol. VIII | January—February, 1906 | No. 1 |
j&trli = Lore
A BI-MONTHLY MAGAZINE
DEVOTED TO THE STUDY AND PROTECTION OF BIRDS
Official Organ of the Audubon Societies
Vol. VIII January — February, 1906 No. 1
An Experience in Tree-top Photography
Young Broad -winged Hawks at Home in Southern Connecticut
By BERT FRANCIS CASE, Middle Haddam. Conn.
Illustrated by the author
THE following account of my first attempt at tree-top photography
may interest the readers of Bird-Lore who are ambitious in a like
direction, as well as express something of the real pleasure of the
experience, — except in the ending.
We found the nest May 3, by chance, as it was the migration season
and we' were out looking for new arrivals, especially among the Warblers.
What called our attention to the nest was the few downy feathers we saw
clinging to the outside. Otherwise we should have passed it by as a last
year's Crow's nest. It was that in a way, as originally it had been built by
Crows, to be later occupied by squirrels, and, last of all, taken possession of
by a pair of Broad -winged Hawks. The Hawks had brought a small
amount of new material, rearranged the old, and thus, with a minimum
amount of work, fashioned a nest that met all practical needs and was
evidently as satisfactory as though they had themselves laid the foundation
sticks.
The nest was in a beech tree about thirty feet from the ground, securely
placed in the. crotch formed by the dividing of the main trunk into several
good-sized branches.
The old collecting instinct was present, I will confess, with the first
sight of the three eggs. Nesting Broad -wings were somewhat rare in Con-
necticut, and oological price-lists quoted the eggs at $1.50 each. But this
was only for a moment. The newly developed camera instinct soon reas-
serted itself.
My next visit to the nest was May 8, when I went prepared to begin
my series of camera studies and realize some of my dreams of doing some-
thing worth while in nature photography. My ardor cooled somewhat when
the very real difficulty of securing the legs of the tripod to various limbs of
