Page:Bird-lore Vol 08.djvu/197

 The Home-life of the Red-tailed Hawk 155 by her mate. My heart beat wildly as I prepared for the climb, and the laws of gravitation seemed for once to have failed, so easy was the ascent. When I reached the camera I was delighted to find that the shutter had been snapped. I was greatly disappointed that evening, when I developed the plate, to find that the trees had swayed and thus stretched the thread, and the wind, not the bird, had taken the photograph, for no Hawk could be found on the nega- tive. Two days passed before the sun shone long enough for more auto-photographs. On the third day I tried again. Three hours after I had placed the camera, I found the bird at the nest. Again I found the shutter released. This negative was a great success, and shows both birds on the nest. The question immedi- ately arose as to which one pressed the button. A careful study of the picture will show the thread passing over the back of the further bird, whose head is modestly hidden behind a limb. Two more photog- raphs of one bird at the nest were taken the next day, at intervals of three hours. On this day I further perfected my apparatus and made my method more certain of suc- cess, by passing the thread across the nest in several dif- ferent directions, with screw-eyes as guides. Thus there was little chance of failure if the Hawk alighted on the nest. The screw-eyes can be seen in the illustrations and also the threads running through them. The birds paid no attention to the thread stretched across their nest, and returned to their home soon after I left the neighborhood. On the bright sunny morning of May 13, the first Hawklet broke through his shell. He was covered with down and lay prone in the center of the nest, with his head stretched forward. Two days later the other egg hatched. The young were six days old when the first picture was taken. RED-TAIL AUTO-?HOTOGRAl'H Both birds in the nest