PHOTO-TRAPPING: PURPLE HERONS AND
SPOONBILLS.
By R.B. Lodge.
It was in 1896 that I described, in 'The Zoologist,'[1] a visit to a well-known breeding-place for Spoonbills in North Holland, and I then expressed a desire to spend a week in the attempt to photograph the adult Spoonbills. This wish was gratified, as far as the week goes, in 1897, but, though I exposed two plates on adult Spoonbills on their nest, both plates were found to be fogged and useless on my return home. In the same year I attempted the same birds in a Spanish lagoon, and failed, and I began to think that Spoonbills were not to be photographed. However, in my albums a blank page was left for them, and my determination was fixed to have another attempt. Not until this year has this been possible, and my blank page is now filled to overflowing.
A week was spent in the same "meer," and hopes were fixed on a new automatic electric photo-trap of my 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 certainly 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 to the switch from a hiding-place the other side of a narrow channel cut in the reeds, from which place, waist deep in water, I also used the tele-photo lens with good effect. Finding that the birds came much more readily than on any previous occasion, I took a whole-plate 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,
- ↑ Zool. 1896, p. 321.
