Bird lore - Project Puffin

IT
BREWER'S BLACKBIRD
Snapping the Back-yard Birds
By PAUL H. DO"WLING, Los Angeles, Calif.
With photographs by the author
IS a fine sport,—this business of photographing birds in your back yard,
especially if the subjects of your pictures are obliging enough to pose
around a water-hydrant with no apparent fear of a kodak set up a few feet
away. I found the Goldfinch the most accommodating of all of these back-
yard birds. It was one of his favorite tricks to perch upon the water-hydrant,
make a neat Httle bow as if saying "How do you do," and twist his neck around
so as to dip his bill in the running water as it came slowly from the pipe.
To snap the birds I needed only a small amount of equipment: a folding
Brownie No. 2A, a piece of string about twenty feet long, a pile of bricks to
rest the camera on, and a chair in which to sit in the warm sun and wait till
the birds got thirsty. About nine in the morning I took my post about twenty
feet from the drinking-place. It was only a few minutes until the first Gold-
finch flew down upon the hydrant from a tree nearby. He perched himself
above the running water and tried to stick his whole head inside the pipe,
drinking Uterally upside down. I tried to pull the string while he was in this
queer position but the little fellow was too quick for me; so I had to content
myself with a picture of him standing right side up. The Goldfinches do not
seem to be afraid of the kodak but are so continually on the move that one has
to make a quick snap at just the right time to get anything that looks like a
bird on the film.
The hydrant that furnished the watering-place for the birds around my
house stood only a few inches from the ground, and while it was too high for the
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