THE WOMBAT. 3 
a i 
18/9/01. Public Lecture: “ Ornithology in Southern Australia.” 
’"D, LeSouéf, O.M.Z.S. This was held in conjunction with the 
Photographic Club, Mr LeSouéf haying kindly come down by 
request. 
24/9/01. Magazine Evening. Messrs. C. H. Tilley and W. T. 
Price elected members. Mr. Shaw showed a number of 
concretions and Mr. Belcher showed some shells and » number 
of bird skins. 
The following publications have been received :—The Victorian 
Naturalist, Vol. XVIIL, Nos. 2-5, The Zoologist, Nos. 719- 
722, The Birds of Yorkshire, Farm, Stock and Fireside, 
Trans. Yorkshire Naturaiists' Onion, 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, Lalso 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 upa platform of cut sedge and reeds, on 
which the camera was just raised above the water, and well covered 
