. The home life of wild birds; a new method of the study and photography of birds. Birds; Photography of birds. 11. Wild Figs. io6, 107. Male Red\ving Blackbird cleaning nest on two distinct visits; photographed under similar conditions, and illus- trating the formation of habit in the daily routine. regularity. They would fl}' to the main branch, hop along toward the fork in which the nest was suspended, and finally perch on a small con- venient twig just over their young. Out of sixty recorded visits they de- viated from this habitual method but three times, and then only before the)
. The home life of wild birds; a new method of the study and photography of birds. Birds; Photography of birds. 11. Wild Figs. io6, 107. Male Red\ving Blackbird cleaning nest on two distinct visits; photographed under similar conditions, and illus- trating the formation of habit in the daily routine. regularity. They would fl}' to the main branch, hop along toward the fork in which the nest was suspended, and finally perch on a small con- venient twig just over their young. Out of sixty recorded visits they de- viated from this habitual method but three times, and then only before the)' had recovered from their first feelings of fear. In this case the nest- ing branch had been drawn down about a foot by means of a cord, but was not otherwise disturbed. In cleaning the nest the attitude is frequently the same in successive visits, the birds often clasping the same twigs, so that a number of pho- tographs of the act taken without moving the camera may be so nearly identical that only the most careful inspection will reveal the least differ- ence in pose or position. While engaged in studying some Redwing Blackbirds last July the weather was hot, and the 3'oung had to be brooded almost constantly. The female would sit on the nest, often with back to the tent, with feathers erect and mouth open in her efforts to keep cool. Suddenly the shriek of a steam whistle sounded the hour of noon at a mill scarcely three rods away. It startled me, but the bird did not budge a feather. It is not difficult to imagine that her first experience witli this instrument of torture was quite different in its re- sult, but the case illustrates the ease with which birds become quickly ac- customed to strange and uncouth sounds, when, as sometimes happens, they place their nests in a saw-mill a few feet from the buzzing saw or above the grinding trolley cars of a cit\' Please note that these images are extracted from scanned page images that may have been digitally enhanced f
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, booksubjectbirds, bookyear1901
