. Wild wings; adventures of a camera-hunter among the larger wild birds of North America on sea and land . mten to twenty feet of me were a sprinkling of minor waders,a fine flock of some twenty Black-bellied Plovers, and a fewLaughing Gulls. I wish I could have photographed thegulls, yet I am sorry they were there, for while I was tryingto clear a window through the mangrove shrubbery outof which to aim the camera, they saw me and set up sucha screaming, as the)^ departed, that they took with them allthe other birds. However, standing knee-deep in the water, I finished mywork and set up the c
. Wild wings; adventures of a camera-hunter among the larger wild birds of North America on sea and land . mten to twenty feet of me were a sprinkling of minor waders,a fine flock of some twenty Black-bellied Plovers, and a fewLaughing Gulls. I wish I could have photographed thegulls, yet I am sorry they were there, for while I was tryingto clear a window through the mangrove shrubbery outof which to aim the camera, they saw me and set up sucha screaming, as the)^ departed, that they took with them allthe other birds. However, standing knee-deep in the water, I finished mywork and set up the camera on the tripod, and focused onthe sand-bar. No sooner had I done this than many of thebirds began to come back,—various sandpipers, Dowitchers, 220 WILD WINGS Wilsons Plovers, and soon a large flock of and swiftly I photographed them until my plateswere exhausted, when I returned to the boat for more, andthen went at it again. Not a bird saw me. Within a dozenfeet they fed, bathed, preened their feathers, and rested, withno shadow of suspicion disturbing their peace of A SPLEXliITJ MALE KLACK-BREAST PLOVER. TIRED 0(.- feeding Then I left them and went out to an open beach with thereflex camera. A large flock of small sandpipers and someTurnstones, with a few Ring-necked and Wilsons Plovers,were busily feeding. Upon hands and knees I crawled outto an isolated mangrove bush, close to the waters edge. Thebirds fed up near to me, as I squatted there, without seemingto distinguish me from the bush. Some of them, one or two THE SHORE PATROL 221 at a time, would even run past me within about five feet, with-out being alarmed. With my single lens, an inch-wide aj^er-ture of the curtain and not ver} rapid speed, I exposed plateafter plate, and not long before sundown had used up mylast one. We then crossed to the other key, only a few rods oft, and
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Keywords: ., bookauthorjobh, bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, booksubjectbirds
