Moving Picture Age (Jan-Dec 1921)

March, 1921 MOVING PICTURE AGE 13 Bringing Bird Life to the Class Room How wild life has been brought to the screen by William L. and Irene Finley of the National Association of Audubon Societies for the Protection of Wild Animals and Birds By Jercme Lachenbruch Publicity Director, Goldwyn Pictures Corporation, New York City "V ISUAL instruction through the motion picture camera," says Mr. William L. Finley, the naturalist, "is the best means I know of to spread broadcast a love of our native wild life." Mr. Finley and his wife, Irene L. Finley, have been studying wild animals and birds for the past twenty years. Their plan has been to take the field early each spring with a photographic outfit and hunt wild birds and animals in their native environment. They have ranged up and down the Pacific coast, through the Northwest and the Southwest; and in their long service in the interest of natural history, have compiled what amounts to a natural history of American birds in picture form. "Until the motion picture camera was introduced," the naturalist says, "we had to limit our work to still photographs ; and these showed us very little of what we wanted to know. Now, we can study the habits of various birds and animals and learn just how they move and act." This has been exemplified in a study of the sage grouse that Mr. and Mrs. Finley have made, and reveals the fact that this, bird does not walk in the ordinary sense of the term. Its mode of locomotion is in the nature of a dance. Heretofore, it was known that the bird walked differently from other feathered creatures ; but it remained for the motion picture camera to show exactly what the movement was. Analysis of the motion pictures Mr. Finley took showed that the sage grouse moved with a series of steps that resembled a dance. These remarkable motion photographs were made under the auspices of the Bray studios, which distribute the results of the Finley studies throughout the country. In stalking the wild antelope in southern Oregon, Mr. Finley developed a new technique by means of which he overcame the natural timidity of the animals. It consists of what Mr. Finley calls a sage brush blind ; and is a tent-like construction with a hole large enough to permit the camera lens to extrude. The blind, covered with local flora, was set up at the antelope's water hole ; and Mr. and Mrs. Finley waited within it for days. When the antelopes came to drink, Mr. Finley manipulated a metronome, which made a sound similar to the clicking of the camera when pictures are being taken. At first, the antelopes were startled, and ran away ; but they came back, heard the noise, and concluded that it was harmless. However, their nervousness continued for five days. At the end of this time, the animals paid no more attention to the clicking sound. Then Mr. Finley got his camera into action, with the result that his antelope pictures show exactly how this specimen comports itself. Courtesy The Bray Pictures Corporation. One of the results of these film nature studies has been to interest children One of the most remarkable natural history films ever made shows the life history of the California condor. For this work, the Finleys made eight separate trips into the mountains. But the results justified their pertinacity, tor they were able to get pictures of condor eggs, of baby birds, and to follow their growth through the early flying stages to the day when the young birds found mates and repeated the love story of their parents. The Finley studies of the Canadian mountain goat, which is perhaps the shyest wild animal known, is among those that the Bray studios have in their library. The cougar, the bob-cat, the moose and other big game, have all fallen before the attack of the Finley motion picture camera. "It is a new way of hunting," remarked Mr. Finley in speaking of his experiences, "but it is a very humane one." One of the most beautiful studies Mr. and Mrs. Finley have made reveals the white and the blue heron in their native states. On the protected nesting grounds in Southern .Oregon, which were set aside for the protection of wild birds during the Roosevelt administration, the heron was found quite unmoved by the presence of the blind. However, none of the birds came verv close to the camera, so Mr. Finley had to use a telescopic lens. With this, he was able to get clear photographs of the mother birds feeding their young in the trees ; and some views showed the youngsters sliding along the branches testing the strength of their fragile legs, and balancing themselves with humorous awkwardness. In the same breeding grounds, Mr. Finley found a huge colony of white pelicans that shied away at his approach. But these birds are inquisitive by nature ; and gradually they returned to investigate the nature of their visitors. Soon, the entire flock came waddling back, looking for all the world like a huge white cloud rolling along the shore of the lake. Of course, Mr. Finley was ready to receive them with a barrage of "shots" from his motion picture camera. The work of Mr. and Mrs. Finley is not limited to those birds and animals known only as wild. Perhaps some of their best studies reveal the idiocyncrasies of various types of owls. The barn owl, that marvelous scavenger of the barns, which is the farmer's best friend in keeping his bins free of insects and rodents that destroy his corn, .shows up splendidly in the films. Besides this variety, Mr. Finley has filmed the long-eared, the short-eared and the while owl. He managed to obtain a picture of the latter in a fighting attitude ; that is, on its back, with talons extended. The owl, according to Mr. Finley, takes its prey building bird houses