Resetting the shutter, and covering all up, the trap was left again until after 6 p.m., when a second visit again found it sprung, and the plate duly exposed; while on a subsequent day—the last one of my stay—she came on again. The first Heron, I think I may safely say, to photograph itself with electricity, but probably not the last.
Ardea purpurea automatically photographed by itself.
If this method succeeds with a bird of such extreme shyness and timidity as the Purple Heron, it should prove of great service in obtaining records of birds and animals hitherto impossible. Not only birds at their nest, but any bird or animal, large or small, diurnal or nocturnal, which can be attracted by a bait, or which habitually uses the same path or run, can now be photographed. Of course, for nocturnal animals the inclusion in the circuit of a flash-light, to be ignited by the same current which operates on the shutter, is indispensable.
Besides the Purple Heron, the trap was tried at the nests of a Marsh-Harrier and a Great Crested Grebe. These attempts, from the difficulty there was in concealing the camera, were failures.
