Page:Handbook for Boys.djvu/111

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

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

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