Page:Handbook for Boys.djvu/111

90 blind, or where this is not-possible, by means of a long thread, after carefully hiding the camera with boughs, leaves, sods, etc.

How to Know An idea of the details of a bird's life which'a scout may come to know, may be had from the following table:


 * 1) Description. (Size, form, ,,color, and markings.)
 * 2) Haunts. (Upland, lowland, lakes, fivers, woods, fields, etc.)
 * 3) Movements. (Slow or active, hops, walks, creeps, swims, tail wagged, etc.)
 * 4) Appearance. (Alert, listless, crest erect, tail drooped, etC.)
 * 5) Disposition. (Solitary, flocking, wary, unsuspicious, etc.)
 * 6) Flight. (Slow, rapid, direct, undulating, soaring, sailing, flapping, etc.)
 * 7) Song (Pleasing, unattractive, long, short, loud, faint, sung from  the ground, from a perch, in the air, etc. Season of song.)
 * 8) Call notes. (Of surprise, alarm, protest, warning; signalling, etc;)
 * 9) Season. (Spring, fall, summer, winter, with times of arrival and departure and variations in numbers.)
 * 10) Food. (Berries, insects, seeds, etc.; how secured.)
 * 11) Mating. (Habits during courtship.)
 * 12) Nesting. (Choice of site, material, construction, eggs, incubation, etc.)
 * 13) The young. (Food and care of, time in the nest, notes, actions,  flight, etc.)

So varied is a bird's life that there is still plenty to be learned about even our common birds. It is quite possible for a scout to discover some facts that have never yet been published in books

What One Boy Did

A boy once originated the idea of varying the usual "bird's nesting" craze into a systematic study of the breeding of our common birds. In one spring he found within the limits of a single 'village one hundred and seventy robins' nests. "One hundred were in suitable situations on private places, forty-one were in woods, swamps and orchards, eight were p!aced under bridges (two being under the iron girders of the railroad bridge) four were