Page:Bird-lore Vol 08.djvu/19

 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