The camera thus opens the door to a field of sport previously closed to those who love birds too much to find pleasure in killing them; to whom Bob-White’s ringing whistle does not give rise to murderous speculations as to the number in his family, but to an echo of the season’s joy which his note voices. They therefore have a new incentive to take them out of doors; for however much we love Nature for Nature’s sake, there are few of us whose pleasure in an outing is not intensified by securing some definite, lasting result.
We are not all poets and seers, finding sufficient reward for a hard day’s tramp in a sunset glow or the song of a bird. Enjoy these things as we may, who would not like to perpetuate the one or the other in some tangible form?
And here we have one of the reasons for the collecting of birds and eggs long after the collector’s needs are satisfied. He goes on duplicating and reduplicating merely to appease the almost universal desire to possess any admired although useless object. Once let him appreciate, however, the pleasure of hunting with a camera, the greater skill required, and the infinitely greater value of the results to be obtained, and he will have no further use for gun, climbing irons, and egg drill.
Furthermore, the camera hunter possesses the advantage over the so-called true sportsman, in that all is game that falls to his gun; there is not a bird too small or too tame to be unworthy of his attention; nor are there seasonal restrictions to be observed, nor temptations to break game laws, but every day in the year he is free to go afield, and at all times he may find something to claim his attention.
Finally, there is to be added to the special charm of bird photography the general charm attending the use of the camera. Thousands of people are finding pleasure in the comparatively prosaic employment of photographing houses, bridges, and other patiently immovable objects wholly at the camerist’s mercy. Imagine, then, the far greater enjoyment of successes not only of real value in themselves, but undeniable tributes to one’s skill both as photographer and hunter.
Nor should this introduction be closed without due acknowledgment to the educational value of photography, to its power to widen the scope of our vision, and to increase our appreciation of the beautiful. There is a magic in the lens, the ground glass, and the dark-cloth which transform the commonest object into a thing of rarest interest.
THE OUTFIT AND METHODS OF THE BIRD PHOTOGRAPHER
THE BIRD PHOTOGRAPHER’S OUTFIT
