Bird lore - Project Puffin

First Efforts at Bird Photography 89
CHICKADEE LEAVING ITS NEST TO FORAGE FOR A
FAMILY OF EIGHT
friend saw the Chickadees
begin the hole. On April
26, the hole was six inches
deep ! The birds had dug
through fourteen inches
of wood to make their
home!
On May 2 the nest
was finished, and on May
9 there were eight eggs
in the little bit of a hole
that could hardly hold
the mother bird.
May 23, I took my
camera with me to the
nest. I expected that the
young birds would be out
by that time, and that the old birds would be flying in and out with food,
giving me many opportunities for photography. I looked in the nest and saw
that every egg was hatched, so I proceeded to set my camera about two feet
away, when who should appear on the ground-glass but one of the parents,
with a mouth full of strug-
gling little green caterpillars.
She, if it were the female,
looked at the camera a second
or two, then, without another
thought of the outside world,
hopped down into the nest
and fed her young.
The camera arranged, I
was just about to seek concealment
behind a bush, when
both of the parent birds flew
near the nest with food. I
stood very still. One of the
birds, the male, I think,
stopped too, but the other
one flew right into the nest.
She soon came out, and stood
on the very point I had the
camera focused. Very slowly
I put my hand up to the
shutter-release, expecting the
CHIPPING SPARROW APPROACHING ITS NEST