Ornithological Society

formidable array of guns, which he explained and exhibited at the meeting. By the third meeting J. F. Yeomans had recovered from his operation and he and R. B. Daniel gave their postponed talk on "Rock Climbing". This was illustrated by films with a spoken commentary by Daniel. At the final meeting of the term Miss Dyson, secretary of the York branch of the British Interplanetary Society, gave a very interesting talk on "Space Travel". This was illustrated by slides, a film strip of a Viking rocket and a short film showing the launching of a rocket from Cape Canaveral. M.J.S.

THE ORNITHOLOGICAL SOCIETY

Trapping has continued this term but not with the success of the corresponding term last year. 232 birds were caught and the individual species totals are given at the end. Of these, two are new to our ringing list. They are the tree creeper and long-tailed tit, both of which were trapped on the same day at a farm near Stillingfieet. There are several reasons for the fall in numbers trapped this term, the most important being the very mild weather which we have had. During last February in a spell of cold weather it was not unusual to catch 20 starlings in a day, but this year we have only reached double figures three times. Other minor reasons were the steady winds in the last fortnight which prevented the use of mist nets and the fact that several of the birds caught were "retraps", i.e. birds we had ringed the previous year.

Towards the end of the term a visit was made to Hornsea Mere. Although it was rather late in the year to hope to see very much, we counted seven • species of duck; mallard, widgeon, tufted, shoveller, goldeneye, pochard and merganser. In addition we had good views of some pairs of great-crested grebes in breeding plumage and a snow bunting.

One of the senior boys, P. Stuttard, has now obtained his C ringing permit and it is hoped ;hat several of the members will get their permits when they are old enough.

Next term our activities will include the finding and recording of nests and the ringing of the nestlings if possible. We have also offered to help in a scheme for the study of breeding swallows. This involves trapping all the adult pairs in a definite area and ringing as many of their young as we can. The scheme will be continued for a few years to see if the same birds return to the same area or even the same farm.

RINGING TOTALS LIST

Starling 148, blackbird 24, dunnock 17, blue tit 11, robin 8, tree sparrow 6, songthrush 5, redwing 2, great tit 2, chaffinch 2, wren 2, yellow hammer 2, reed bunting 1, tree creeper 1, long-tailed tit 1.