In fact, we had been at the nest for not three-quarters of an hour, and I was only beginning my vigil.
“Honestly, I’d think I’d rather listen to Mrs Connor lecture me about the ills of whiskey and dancing, than sit here with nothing but the flies and this insufferable heat and you not talking at all.”
Perhaps she should seek out some other company, I suggested as kindly as I could manage.
“Yes, I will do just that!” she exclaimed, as if released from some odious duty. “Just tell me as soon as you have a picture I can see.”
Now that I am able to sit on my field stool and contemplate the scene in some peace, there is much that gladdens me. The mother bird tends to her nest. As afternoon wears on, with the sun over the river, the light is quite lovely, and I can see already how this pneumatic shutter is essential. With only the subtlest of movement, I can press the bulb and rapidly expose the plate.
Yet I need to be much closer if there is to be any hope of the nest looking like something more than a black dot in the far distance, only I fear that if I press the female, she will abandon it all together.
Beyond photographs, it gives me joy just to observe the Rufous humming bird through field glasses, as she sits with her long, elegant beak and speckled throat. She shifts now and then, flares her tail feathers, and adjusts herself to her eggs. When the wind gusts along the river, and the cane shakes violently, she settles herself down into her nest, like a fisherman in a boat. I begin to wonder if she is unskilled at choosing her nesting sites, and if maybe earlier in the season she lost one to wind or storm. That would explain this late nest. All in all, I have much to add to my field book.
I have taken one photograph, though I know I am still much too far from the nest. It occurs to me that if I could somehow conceal myself and the camera, with only the lens unobstructed, I might be able to place myself much closer without causing a disruption.
June 30
“A hunting blind is what you’re after.”
My inclination to seek out Mr MacGillivray was entirely correct. I explained my desire to construct a kind of camouflage for myself so that I might position my camera within feet of the nest.
We will need it to be tall enough to accommodate the tripod and camera, so that I might aim precisely into the nest, but should otherwise be as small and unobtrusive as possible. I will send Charlotte to Vancouver tomorrow to purchase canvas from the mercantile, and Mr MacGillivray has promised to help me build a crude frame.
A delightful sense of anticipation flutters within me.
July 1
As I brought my camera to the nest this morning, I found that even as I walked, I studied the angle and nature of the light and considered how I might compose a picture of this arrangement of trees or the pleasing way the lane runs past the General’s house. I noticed that the mountains were flattened of all detail, but remembered how, in the evenings, their ridges and peaks are often brought out in relief by the setting sun.
And then I suddenly arrived at a wonderful consideration: somehow, through these many weeks of study and effort, I have come to see the world through the eyes of a photographer! Mr Redington said it was so, he believed in me even as I doubted myself, and now I find that perhaps he was correct after all.
July 2
I wish I could only be happy on her behalf?—?I have learned that Evelyn soon goes to San Francisco with Lieutenant Harvey, who has resigned his commission and will become a partner in a shipping business. I am disappointed that she did not tell me herself; I heard it instead through Charlotte and her mother. When I asked Evelyn about her plans, she was too eager to defend herself, saying that while she will travel with Mr Harvey, she will stay with a cousin in San Francisco until the wedding. I care little for propriety, only about her well-being and happiness.
She says she longs for the cosmopolitan, for surprise and newness, for anything but the treacherous hold of the commonplace, and as she spoke, there was a fever in her eyes that appeared less wholesome than that of a joyful bride-to-be; I do not like to echo Mrs Connor, but I suspect Evelyn’s many late nights do her health ill.
General and Mrs Haywood cannot be pleased, for she has brought some embarrassment upon her family, and while Lieutenant Harvey has promised to marry her and he has means, he is also known to be impulsive and fiery-tempered. Yet I suspect it is his very unpredictability that maintains Evelyn’s attraction.