LURE OF THE STINK COCK - A Russian photographer pursues a smelly but majestic bird known as the hoopoe.(Nikolai Shpilenok)

SIX FEATHERY REAR ENDS aim out of a nest in an oak tree and directly at Russian photographer Nikolai Shpilenok, in an adjacent blind. Hurriedly, Shpilenok slides a small pane of glass into a wire clip in front of his face and camera lens. Within seconds, a slew of simultaneous squirts coats the glass in a stinky secretion. Despite the fusillade from the chicks, Shpilenok continues to watch undaunted just inches from the nest. Things could be worse, he knows. The birds are hoopoes, and their mother, who has grown accustomed to the photographer, reserves her foul-smelling firearm for other more menacing foes.

Shpilenok sits in his makeshift blind, erected on stilts next to the old oak, observing the hoopoes in their nest in a hollow tree cavity. At 35, Shpilenok has been photo-graphing wildlife up close for 20 years. Although kingfishers, bee eaters, storks, dragonflies, mosquitoes and ants are all part of his photographic repertoire, the wary hoopoe has been dodging his lens for years. "I have had my eye on this bird for a long time," says Shpilenok, a staff photographer and artist for the Bryansk Forest Nature Reserve in western Russia. "The hoopoe is one of the most beautiful birds I have laid eyes on, and probably the worst smelling, too."

The Bryansk Forest (see "Letters From the Cabin," …