154 Bird -Lore She never came near enough to do any damage, but always changed her course when a few feet away and veered off a little to the right. Her anxiety was not even allayed when I climbed down out of the tree, but she must needs follow me a mile and a half on my way home. As I approached the hill on April II, I could see a Hawk on the dead oak limb in exactly the same place where he was when I went away six days before. He screamed once, perhaps as a warning, spread his wings and sailed out over me, turning his head as he flew to get a better view of me. I could see the tail of the female extending from over the side of the nest, but she valiantly stuck to her post until I had climbed part way up the hill. Then, with a few great flaps of her wings, she hastened out of gunshot, and, circling overhead as on my former visit, she screamed with uneasiness and anger while I climbed the fifty feet of birch tree to the nest and examined the two eggs which lay side by side in the little grooves they had made for themselves in the lining. I left the Hawks still in possession of their beauties, but returned in a few days with a box which looked like a camera. This box I placed in a neighboring birch tree ten feet away, as nearly on a level with the nest as decayed limbs and small branches would permit. This was to accustom the Hawks to the presence of a camera. A week later, I again visited the nest, but this time I brought the real camera and fastened it to a limb in place of the dummy, by means of a clamp such as is used by bicycle riders to fasten cameras to the handle-bars of bicycles. I intended to work the shutter of the camera with a thread from a hiding-place behind a tree some distance away. But here I encoun- tered a serious difficulty, for Hawks are so sharp of eye that I could not remain close enough to the tree to work the shutter of the camera without frightening them away. Some ingenious photographer has made many interesting pictures by placing a camera and flash -lamp near the runways of deer and other animals. A string which lights the flash -lamp and snaps the shutter is touched by any wild creature which walks along the path. In a similar manner I decided to try to make the Hawk his own photographer, — an auto- photographer. I attached a thread to the camera shutter, laid it lightly over the nest and tied it to a limb on the other side. At first I stretched the thread too taut, the added weight of my body bent the tree over, and when I climbed down it sprang back a few inches', sufficient to release the shutter and so prematurely expose the plate. In this way four plates were ruined before the correct length of thread was determined. When I had arranged everything at the nest, I visited the domain of another Red -tail a mile up the creek, and placed another camera in a similar position close to the nest in a large elm tree. This bird did not return to her home duties until the camera was removed. On my return to the first nest, the Hawk flew off and was quickly joined
