c. and h. candleh’s notes from the Netherlands. 177 
In 1789 the Dutch naturalist, Cornelius Nozeman, published the 
second volume of his work on the birds of the Netherlands. In 
the chapter on the Cormorant he gives an account of the breeding 
of this bird, together with Herons and Spoonbills, upon a marsh 
near Nieuwerkerk, a few miles from Rotterdam. This breeding- 
place he describes as given over to desolation ; it lay, he says, in 
the rarely visited and little known Wolle voppen-polder enclosed 
within its own bound, over which no one might pass without leave 
of the tenant. The name of the spot was Isselmeyr, the desig- 
nation apparently of a small lake, which before its embankment 
communicated with the Ijssel. The old naturalist warms into 
enthusiasm, when he recalls the sight of the birds in their lonely 
haunt. “ In the Natural History of our Land,” ho says, “ this is 
on the wholo a spectacle as great and as worthy of attention as 
anything I have ever seen in our Provinces ; and to see it the 
lover of this study should have no trouble to complain of, at the 
most he needs only to make a journey of a few miles.” 
Referring again to this colony in his long and interesting article 
on the Spoonbill, he describes a visit he himself made to the place 
as follows : — 
“About an hour from the spot where, in lofty trees, the renowned 
Willughby, more than a hundred years ago, met with these beautiful birds 
nesting in great numbers, I, some few years since found the Spoonbills 
breeding on the lowest branches of pollarded, wide-topped, and so not very 
high alder trees ; and also a few pairs upon the flat ground, in nests placed 
upon the accumulations of old nest heaps. They came there every year, so 
the tenant of the land informed me ; that is to say, to an almost inaccessible 
spot in a morass in the neighbourhood of the so called Ijsselraeyr behind 
Nieuwerkerk, where quiet seclusion from men and from sounds, with 
water at hand abounding in fish, afforded to these birds a very favourable 
opportunity to dwell undisturbed, and day by day to find sustenance for 
themselves and food for their young in plenty. So, when attended closely 
by my guide, I ventured myself on the insecure crust of mud, I saw about 
ten pairs of them breeding close by one another; those further from me 
were not to be approached. The uneasy flight to and fro, however, of these 
last, from among some trees standing a short way off, and back again, 
revealed to us plainly that they were in the midst of breeding. Without 
great trouble, or marvellous exertions, I was thus able to possess myself of 
one of tho nests (containing three eggs) which were built on the ground of 
the treacherous marsh, upon the heaped-up remains of some old nest, be it a 
Spoonbill’s, a Cormorant’s, or a Heron’s. The white Spoonbill belongs 
therefore, beyond all contradiction, to the number of the birds of our 
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