. Bird-lore . , yet no less inclined to slink awaythe minute ones back is turned. After this age the photographingof these birds becomes a science by itself— requiring cool, sunnydays, abundant patience, and no end of plates. The mosquitoes andthe blue-bottle flies, both being faithful retainers at the Marsh Hawks 48 Bird- Lore courts ; the intense lieat, which makes the birds loll and fidget ; thepleasant effluvium, evidencing garter-snakes, and such like, and aboveall, the habit the birds have of sneaking away just as one has themnicely posed,— these are some of the amenities of this sort of
. Bird-lore . , yet no less inclined to slink awaythe minute ones back is turned. After this age the photographingof these birds becomes a science by itself— requiring cool, sunnydays, abundant patience, and no end of plates. The mosquitoes andthe blue-bottle flies, both being faithful retainers at the Marsh Hawks 48 Bird- Lore courts ; the intense lieat, which makes the birds loll and fidget ; thepleasant effluvium, evidencing garter-snakes, and such like, and aboveall, the habit the birds have of sneaking away just as one has themnicely posed,— these are some of the amenities of this sort of pho-tography. Yet there are compensations. Call it hypnosis, or what youwill, the young birds, until thirty-five days old. when the feathersare quite fully grown, show themselves to be most patient sitters,even when, to speak Irishly, they are lying on their backs. All this,if one keeps his eye upon them. Thus, one four weeks old bird layon his back not less than twenty minutes in the blazing sun with his. MARSH HAWKS, 24 DAYS OLD eyes wide open, the blue-bottles buzzing about his head, and themosquitoes plying their beaks upon his cere. At this age the youngbirds seem to become quite inured to the sun, yet the\ now spendmost of their time at some distance from the nest — from ten to fiftyfeet—the paths that the} several!} and collectively use becomingby this time well beaten and strewn with pellets and the cast-offelements of their plumage. At about thirty-four days the first real attempt at flight longer now. when the young bird is traced to his lair, will hethrow himself upon his back, in open-beaked defiance ; but herises at once just from under ones feet, and flaps, not ungrace-fully, along the grass or bush-tops. At about forty days from birththe young make fairly long flights, rising even above the tree-tops,amid which some of them have been reared. Such is the life-history of a young Marsh Hawk—from egg toair. Thirty days in the shell, and forty day
Size: 1791px × 1394px
Photo credit: © Reading Room 2020 / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., boo, bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, booksubjectbirdsperiodicals
