THK WOMBAT. 



13/9/01. Public Lecture: " Ornithology in Southern Australia." 

 D. LeSouef, C.M.Z.S. This was held in conjunction with the 

 Photographic Club, Mr LeSouef having kindly come down by 

 request. 



24/9/01. Magazine Evening. Messrs. C. H. Til ley and W. T. 

 Price elected members. Mr. Shaw showed a number of 

 concretions and Mr. Belcher showed some shells and a number 

 of bird skins. 



The following publications have been received : — The Victorian 

 Naturalist, Vol. XVIII., Nos. 2-5, The Zoologist, Nos. 719- 

 722, The Birds of Yorkshire, Farm, Stock and Fireside, 

 Trans. Yorkshire Naturalists' Union, Parts 25 and 27, and 

 Syllabuses of Meetings of the Yorkshire Naturalists' Union. 



PHOTO-TRAPPING— PURPLE HERONS 

 AND SPOONBILLS. 



In an article in the Zoologist, under the above title, Mr. R. B. 

 Lodge says that he had attempted to photograph the spoonbills on 

 a certain " meer " in Holland, but without success till the present 

 year. 



He says : — " Hopes were fixed on a new automatic electric 

 photo-trap of my own own contrivance ; but directly I reached the 

 colony I found it was too late to use it, as far as the spoonbills 

 were concerned. The eggs were hatched, and the half-grown 

 young ones were walking about restlessly, and would certaiuly have 

 sprung the trap before the arrival of the parent birds. Other 

 methods, therefore, had to be resorted to, and the electric shutter 

 was released by means of a string on the switch from a hiding-place 

 the other side of a channel cut in the reeds, from which place, 

 waist-deep in water, I also used the telephoto lens with good effect. 

 Finding that the birds came much more readily than on any 

 previous occasion, I took a whole-piate camera, and hid up with it 

 about seven yards away from the nest, and got my boatman to 

 cover me over with reeds. Here I soon had two splendid chances 

 in a very short time. Once both the old spoonbills and their three 

 young ones were in front of me ; the young birds, after teasing the 

 old ones for food, would insert their beaks into the parent's throat, 

 and there feed like young pigeons. 



Purple Herons, as usual, were nesting in close proximity. A 

 nest was found, and we built up a platform of cut sedge and reeds, on 

 which the camera was just raised above the water, and well covered 



