WE have included this bird, as it is perhaps as handsome as any in all Egypt, but it may be questioned whether many of our readers will come across it, for it lives in dense reed beds which grow in the large lakes of the Delta and Fayoom, and rarely quits them for the waters of the Nile. Our own Waterhen, or Moorhen, is a sort of near cousin of this bird, but whereas our bird always gives the impression of being animated and cheery, this Egyptian Gallinule somehow looks depressed in spite of its brilliant plumage; and when it walks, it does so with no indecent haste, but slowly lifts one leg whilst the long toes hang loosely, and then gently places it down on the ground, all the while holding its head and body nearly perpendicularly, whilst, when not taking this strenuous exercise, it

STUDIES OF GALLINULE
STUDIES OF GALLINULE

sits with rounded shoulders on some stump or dead herbage by the hour together. As its food seems to consist almost entirely of the inner and soft parts of the shoots of reeds and other water-plants amongst which it lives all its days, it does not have to make any special effort to obtain food, and conceivably it may be one of those birds which are on a slow downward grade towards extinction. There can be little doubt but that the matter of food-supply has led many birds to alter their methods of life. In some cases, finding an abundance of food ever ready to hand, the use of the wings was abandoned, and with the inevitable result that just as they ceased to fly so the wings ceased growing, till at last they became flightless birds and at the mercy of each and every enemy that might attack them. It may be that thinking on these things has made the bird melancholy and depressed; but nothing can save it but “bucking up” and using its powers. Mr. Erskine Nicol told me how once, when out shooting, he saw one in a cornfield near a stack; he went towards it and the bird ran behind the stack; when he followed, it would not leave the friendly shelter, but by simply running round and round always kept safe. Mr. Nicol at last got tired of this useless chase and thought out a plan of campaign. Starting faster than ever, he ran round after the bird, and then suddenly turned and ran round the opposite way, when he met the melancholy Gallinule full face; and so flustered it that it left the stack and flew at right angles away, giving a possible shot, which was taken advantage of. On another occasion one was seen swimming in a miserable little duck-pond outside a village, tenanted by tame ducks, and the Gallinule absolutely refused to leave the sheltering society of these farmyard birds. Both these incidents seem to point to the same sort of method of life: “just sit tight, don’t fly into the open, risk nothing in the outside world, there are unknown dangers”: so it may be that this bird will sit, and sit, all humped up in its reed jungle till at last it loses the power of flight altogether; and then, before long, it will certainly fall a prey to some force or enemy which it has no power of resisting or escaping from. Mr. J. H. Gurney has also written of this bird, that just in the early morning or towards sunset he has seen it leave the shelter of these great reed-beds, but keeping quite close thereto, and at the least sign of danger running back to them. Seldom or never has he seen it take even a flight of a few yards. Along with its vegetable food it takes a certain number of small aquatic insects, and when this food cannot be obtained it is not averse to good hard grain of any kind. It lays six to eight eggs, which are ruddy-brown spotted with dark purple-brown.

THE COOT

Fulica atra

It is the same bird we get in Britain, and behaves in identically the same way. On preserved waters, as for instance the Sacred Lake at Karnak, where every one may see it, it is, as it is at home, very tame, and rarely takes wing more than from one side to the other of the lake, and if you move quietly, or remain sitting for any length of time, they allow of a very near approach, and come swimming quite close up. Sometimes I have had them walk on to the bank within a few yards of me and start to preen their feathers. If at such a time the sun is shining brightly on them, this bird, which is generally described as being “black with a white bill,” is seen to be a most delightful, almost dove-like coloured creature with jet black glossy head, and the neck with a blue or purple sheen. It is sociable, and though sometimes it has some small squabble with a neighbour, it is in the main seemingly a cheery, good-tempered bird. Although it is not often seen to fly far, it can and does fly enormous distances and at a very great pace. The Coot does not belong to the Duck tribe; it has not true webbed feet, but the web follows the line of the toes on each side. Sometimes it goes in very large flocks, running into thousands, and I have heard of large bags being made; but it seems rather a useless performance, as it is not a good bird for the table by any means, being very fishy flavoured, so fishy that it used to be allowed to be eaten as “fish” on holy days in French convents and monasteries. Its food seems to consist principally of aquatic weeds and grasses, and small fish and water creatures, and when it comes on shore it searches for insects and small slugs and snails, as it grazes goose-like on the young tender blades of grass.

The nest and eggs of the Coot are very like those of the common Moorhen.

THE EGYPTIAN GOOSE

Chenalopex aegyptiacus

THE Egyptian Goose is a handsomely coloured bird, and when seen sunning itself on some sandbank it makes a brilliant picture. It is a real native of the Nile, and breeds in the early spring—March and April; and sportsmen’s records tell of its being a quite shootable bird in the first weeks of May. In 1907, only a quarter of a mile from the busiest part of Luxor, there might have been seen daily a charming little flotilla of the parents and four young ones swimming about round the promontory of land that there juts out. They had nested in the cultivation that at that point comes down to the very water’s edge. This is the ideal position they love, as they can, on the approach of danger, slip at once into the water, where they are

EGYPTIAN GEESE
EGYPTIAN GEESE

comparatively safe. Many, who may not see this bird on the river, have probably often seen it at home, as it is frequently kept with other water-fowl on the ornamental waters of our parks. It is not a lively bird, and seems to spend a large part of the day standing in a hunched-up attitude on some sandbank, well in the middle of the stream, from which position it can see the approach of any enemy. In captivity it is rather morose, and fierce with any smaller fowl it can safely bully. It lives on all sorts of water-insects and weeds, and makes excursions at night-time to the fields and cultivated grounds for grass and corn.

Fig. 10.
Fig. 10.

Probably no single work of art in all Egypt has been more widely copied than the picture of geese which is now in the Museum at Cairo. It came from the tomb of Ne fer maāt at Mêdûm, and is universally known as “the oldest picture in the world,” for it is ascribed to the earliest dynasty, and approximately about 4400 B.C. To a naturalist it is peculiarly interesting, but the interest is linked with sadness, as the subject of the picture being entirely of bird-life, one would have thought that bird-life would be a subject of continued interest; but the reverse is very much the case, so much so, that though this very picture is known to thousands who have never been to Egypt, and many thousands more who have been to Egypt and gone to see this very picture, and bought photographs or copies of it, few or any have really interest enough in it even to learn or inquire what are the names of the geese depicted. In the very rough little sketch on p. 175 the two geese at the extreme right and left are Bean Geese, birds that one might expect the old-time artist to be familiar with, and the same is true of the two geese in the left-hand group, which are White-fronted Geese, as both are winter migrants to Egypt, remaining till March. Of the two remaining birds, from their markings the naturalist will have no doubt but that they are Red-breasted Geese; and there is a mystery, as they never come to Egypt, and being a northern bird, one is utterly at a loss to explain why the artist of that long-distant date should depict that special Goose. That he did see the bird, and with fidelity drew it, are facts, and one can only conclude that zoological collections are no new thing, but that men, nearly six thousand years ago, must have kept rare birds in captivity for the pleasure of their beauty, and that artists went to their zoological gardens or collections, and drew pictures of the inhabitants of far-distant climes for the walls of their temples or tombs. As a realistic study of bird-life this little picture is admirable, the set of the head and peculiar curve of the Feeding Geese is singularly true, whilst the whole is carried through in a broad decorative spirit. It is curious that in a country where the earliest art took subjects from Nature, there should now be such absolute apathy that in many cases the people have no separate names for the birds around them. Egypt has other geese that visit it, but none others native to it. The White-fronted Goose is said to be the most abundant of all, the Brent Goose and the Bean Goose, all three visiting the Nile and Delta in the winter months.

Fig. 11.
Fig. 11.

PINTAIL-DUCK

Dafila acuta

AT different times of the year different birds come in gigantic flocks. Thus at one time, owing to the vast migration of these Pintail-Ducks, it might well be said they were far and away the commonest; but a little later you hardly see one, and wherever you go it is the Shoveller Duck that is met with, whilst at another time it would be the Teal, or the Pochard. So that to settle the point exactly—What is the commonest duck of the country?—is not altogether an easy one, and I do not intend to speak dogmatically; but I have placed this duck first on the list, because not only do you meet with it in enormous numbers, but you also see it represented more frequently on the walls of temples and tombs. The well-known hieroglyph

PINTAIL, TEAL, AND SHOVELLER DUCK
PINTAIL, TEAL, AND SHOVELLER DUCK

of a duck under a circle, which is translated as the Son of the Sun, was doubtless meant to represent this particular bird. Very often—not always—where the workmanship is of the finest and of a good period, the characteristics are exact, and the long pintail feathers are most plainly shown. Now, no duck that comes to this country has a long tail, other than the Pintail, therefore there can be no question that these old-time artists, for some reason best known to themselves, selected from all the various ducks they have, just this particular one to symbolize this royal conception. It is also shown on many wall-paintings in the tombs, flying with the tail spread, and the two long central feathers well marked. Going up the Nile sometimes you pass great high bare sandbanks which have on the other side of them long narrow strips of shallow pools; here, at certain times, is the place to see duck in their thousands—literally thousands. There they sit secure; the high bank screens them from the river-way with its great sailing-boats and modern steamers; they can see the tops of the spars and masts and the black smoke from the steamers’ funnels, but neither boat nor steamer can see them. If you attempt an approach by land you can rarely surprise them, as they always have sentinels well posted up and down the reach of water, and a warning quack and all heads are up on a flash; and if the quack has had a certain intonation they are all up and away at once. Then it is, if you are shooting, that you may, if you keep quiet, get a shot as they return sweeping down and round the water, which they will not completely leave unless very frightened. I have looked on to pools of this sort which have been absolutely black with birds, and amongst the whole, nine-tenths would be Pintail. Later it might be, at that same pool, all would be Shovellers or Pochard. The Pintail is what is known as a surface-feeding duck, and is placed near the common Wild Duck, the Mallard of English waters. It is distinctly peculiar in form; the neck is long, and when alarmed the head is held high, and the whole neck looks very thin. These characters, as well as the long pintail, are well shown at Deir-el-Bahari and other temples, where the wall-painting is of a really good period, and from the frequency of its pictures one can only suppose that it was as common all those years ago as it is to-day. The Zoological Gardens at Cairo are visited nearly every winter by a few Pintails. They feed on grass and water-weeds, and all the teeming larva of flies and other insects that haunt shallow pools and puddles.

THE SHOVELLER DUCK

Spatula clypeata

THE outstanding peculiarity of the Shoveller, male and female, is the large bill. Seen very near at hand it looks both large and clumsy, but it is a bill not made for ornament but for business, and carried low so that it just sweeps the water. As it swims along, a never-ending flow of insect-laden water enters it, and filtering through the plate-like serrations of the sides, leaves a rich deposit of food in the duck’s mouth, and clearly the bigger the bill the more the water that can be filtered and dealt with, and the greater the consequent food-supply for the duck.

It is a really handsome bird in colour, the peculiar mass of light lilac blue-grey feathers of the wing contrasting vividly with the chestnut of the sides. Indeed, I do not know any duck that is superior to it in its vividly contrasting coloration. Although it is in form clumsy-looking, it is anything but clumsy or slow in getting up and on the wing, and I own to having been beaten often at pools similar to those described in reference to the Pintail, by the quickness and pace of its flight. The last visit I paid to the Cairo Zoological Gardens in March 1909, the ornamental waters there were crowded with duck, nearly all Shovellers. All had come in of their own accord, flew freely, and would, so Mr. Nicoll informed me, shortly all be up and away till another season came round. And in the most interesting report of the Wild Birds of the Giza Gardens just published, figures are given. “A few Shovellers arrive, in some years, as early as August, and they become more and more numerous during the autumn and winter. Some leave here in March, but the majority do so in April.” “Up to 1902 twenty was the largest number of Shovellers seen, at one time, on our lake. On the 18th of January 1903, 171 were counted; on the 6th of March 1905, 443. Since then it is estimated that over 500 Shovellers take up their winter quarters with us.”

THE TEAL

Querquedula crecca

Arabic, Sharshare

AS far as my own experience goes, I have never seen any really large flock of duck, of whatever kind, but there have been Teal among them. I do not care to say that I think this is the very commonest of all the duck tribe. It is certainly met with very frequently, but Captain Shelley holds that it is absolutely “the most abundant species of water-fowl throughout Egypt,” and possibly he is right. It is the same smart little bird we have at home, and the male has, when showing off, a most attractive appearance, of which it is fully aware, as is shown by its jaunty carriage. Of all duck, this is the quickest off the mark; how it does it one can hardly see, but it leaves the water in one second, apparently at top speed, as if it had been going for some minutes. As with the Shoveller this duck comes in great numbers to the Cairo Zoological Gardens, and the ready intelligence it shows in remaining in full sight of men and flying close over their heads whilst in the Gardens, and the wary care it shows the moment it is outside the sanctuary, is most interesting. On wall-paintings I am told it is depicted, but I am not certain that I have ever seen its small form shown; in the matter of relative size of living and other objects, these old craftsmen were curiously capricious. A notable illustration of this is in the way they portrayed the wives of the heroic Rameses statues, where you will find the lady shown coming up only to the knee-joint of her gigantic lord and master. When they treated royal ladies in this way, it is useless to expect great accuracy in the matter of rendering the various relative sizes of humble water-fowl! Teal may be seen in nearly all the winter months amongst the Coot at the Sacred Lake at Karnak, and at many other places guarded by the Antiquities Department. Mr. Nicoll writes: “Several hundred Teal winter on the lake in the Gardens (Zoological). In some years a few of them arrive as early as the latter part of August, and they have been known to stay as late as the 8th of May.”

THE WHITE PELICAN

Pelecanus Onocrotalus

THE Pelican has the honour of being, in Egypt, as far as sheer length of wing goes, the largest bird that flies; for the span of wings from tip to tip has been recorded as twelve feet. I believe the span of the Griffon Vulture is only about eight feet. Thirty years ago Pelicans were more often seen than they are to-day. This does not necessarily mean that they are less numerous, but only that, from some cause or another, they do not come within range of observation. I think the traffic on the river having so altered is the probable explanation. I can only recall one case of late, of seeing Pelican on a sandbank, and that was very early in the morning, practically daybreak. Years ago it was not an uncommon thing to see hundreds resting and recruiting on some lonely reach of the river. Captain Shelley says that in “April 1870, below Edfoo, we met with an immense flock of several

WHITE PELICANS
WHITE PELICANS

thousands, passing low along the river on their way north, and although fired at several times they still kept streaming onwards in one continuous flock.” Nowadays you will quite possibly see immense flocks going south in November, or north in the spring, but they will all be flying high and well out of gun-shot. The largest flock I ever saw was in December of 1907 when living at Deir-el-Bahari. I was working outside the hut there, when some noise made me look up, and I saw an amazing sight, hundreds and hundreds of these great birds flying round and round in circles high above the chalk cliff. This was about 2 P.M., and they remained thus slowly circling round and round till nearly 5 P.M., when gradually in small detachments they dwindled away, flying in a southerly direction. At times they came sufficiently low for me to see distinctly the yellow pouch hanging from the under-bill, but then again they would rise in great spiral curves to such a height that even with my pet glass they were almost invisible. With every new curve they showed some alteration of colour, so that sometimes they seemed a coral pink all over, and then again with some altered angle in relation to the sun they were a pure snow white. The two hours or more that they were over just this one spot where Queen Hatshepsut’s temple stands, I worked hard at trying to sketch them till my eyes got blinded by staring up into the blue, and aching with trying to follow some individual bird sweeping right above my head. None but those who have tried it knows what an exhausting thing this is; every bird is changing its place continually, one after another comes sweeping by, turning, rising, falling, interlacing, till one has to absolutely cease looking and close one’s weary eyes. I heard later the rumour that this great flock rested the night on the top of one of the hills a mile farther back, and at dawn were all away south.

Where, however, they can be still seen throughout the winter months and comparatively close at hand is on Lake Menzaleh. I saw them there in March, but by the 12th of April I could not see a single bird. The wonderful colour, a pale coral pink, that they show under the bright Egyptian sky, is something of a surprise to those who have only seen faded stuffed specimens in a museum, or the woebegone individuals in a menagerie. No one interested in birds should neglect the Cairo Zoological Gardens at Giza; there you will see all sorts of hot climate beasts and birds in the perfection of condition that they never show in our colder climes. And the colour that the Pelican displays under these perfect conditions is a revelation. To the most casual it appears pinkish, but to the artistic and observant the brilliance of the carmine-pink revealed in the shadows, and the shell-like delicacy of colour of the feathers seen in full sunlight, is simply charming. I regret, however, that no amount of artistic enthusiasm can ever find anything else to praise in its personal appearance, as it really is most desperately ugly. It is said, however, to be virtuous, and is to this day used as a symbol of beautiful self-sacrifice, and as an ecclesiastical emblem of the feeding of the Holy Catholic Church.[7]

As a child I was much troubled with “the Pelican in the wilderness,” but recently have been greatly relieved to hear, on the best authority, that though it says “wilderness” quite distinctly, it doesn’t, you know, mean wilderness at all; the ordinary wilderness means a sandy, deserty sort of place, but this wilderness, we are told, means a wet sort of watery place. How nice it is to have these clear explanations from the best authorities of all those mysteries that darkened our early years! The Pelican lives entirely on fish, and is therefore never far from water. Considering its rather clumsy form it is fairly agile, and it has been noted that it can and does perch freely on boughs that bend and swing with its weight when at large, and that in captivity at the London Zoological Gardens one habitually used to perch on the thin corrugated wire fence that bisects their small enclosure, an almost acrobatic feat one would not have expected it capable of performing.

In books the statement has been made and often repeated that the Pelican breeds in Egypt, and my visit to Lake Menzaleh was very much taken just to settle whether it and Flamingoes did or did not breed there. I found they did not, and I should think it is very unlikely that they ever did, as though the lake is large the fact that fishermen’s boats go all over it would hardly make it a safe place for these big birds ever to nest in.

THE CORMORANT

Phalacrocorax carbo

Arabic, Agag

THIS is not a bird one would expect to see far away from the salt water, but there is anyhow one colony of them up the Nile at Gebel Abû Fêada—and any one going up the Nile must pass right by their breeding-place—and the birds in general seem to work rather south of that point than to the north. In March 1908 I saw them twice; once, near Manfalût, a string of six flew low over the water in single file so near that one could with the glass see the very hook at the end of their long bills. Perhaps no point on the river is quite so magnificent as these cliffs of Abû Fêada—the water rushes by their very feet, and their tops tower high in beautifully broken forms. The limestones of which they are formed seem to have weathered and perished more than in other parts, and honeycombed masses, and caves large and small, are visible everywhere on its nearly perpendicular sides. It is in these caves that birds have found a happy nesting-ground, and the extent of the deposit of guano in them shows that they have inhabited them for centuries.

The guide-books tell of these high cliffs—“sudden gusts of wind from the mountain often render great precaution necessary in sailing beneath them”; and on the last occasion of passing there was evidence of this, as a regular gale came on us just as we were passing and drove us along at a great pace. This wildness is similar to the wild windiness of the sea-coast, and the Cormorants may in this fact find some attraction to this inland home. But I should think it is far more likely still, that the founders of that colony were birds that had been reared in some of the other breeding-places that exist in the great Salt Lakes of Lower Egypt, and that by some chance taking to the river, which at Menzaleh would not be more than a mile or two away, found that the river fish were excellent, that life was pleasant, and the cliffs suitable for safely nesting in. “Stomach rules the world” is

CORMORANTS On the Nile at Gebel Aboofayda.
CORMORANTS
On the Nile at Gebel Aboofayda.

as true of bird life as any other. Elsewhere I have referred to the beauty and charm of Lake Menzaleh to all naturalists, and I do really think that to get anything like a complete view of Egyptian bird life a visit ought to be paid to some one or other of the lakes, and of course Menzaleh is far and away the best and biggest. But though I suggest a visit, I would not care to have it understood I recommend it as a health resort or place to live in. I write this here, because there are two considerable Cormorant rookeries or breeding-stations that I visited on Lake Menzaleh—there may be others I did not find, but these two I did find, and they will ever live in my memory as the most poisonous plots of earth I have ever stood on. I have been to Cormorant rookeries before, and well know that they don’t smell like rose-gardens. The peculiarity of this great lake is, that it is, and always has been, a great drainage-bed for the whole of Egypt. The result of having been a drainage-bed for all these untold years is that when you stick a pole, or your oar, into the mud and then pull it out, you seem to all at once take the cork out of a bottle containing the most appalling stinks and gases that ever were engendered. One day I was stalking Cormorants on a long flat island of irregular shape, and came to a point where I had to cross about ten or fifteen yards of water. The island was in the middle of the lake, and far away from town or village, and without thinking of consequences I took my boots off and started to wade across. The first step or two was on the shallow shelly shore, but three or four feet and I sank into mud, and as at each step I lifted my feet I let loose ten thousand legions of ancient stinks, the water bubbled and fizzled with them, and even slimy, blear-eyed, unwholesome fish slunk hurriedly away. Reaching the other side, I looked for some clean water to wash my feet, and did so; but it was awkward, as I had to hold my boots and socks in one hand and my nose in the other; but wash as I would the atrocious smell would not go, and I declined to put those evil-smelling things into my boots, and I couldn’t take my feet off; so there I was—the whole island was a swamp, couldn’t sit down anywhere, all puddles and wet, and the more I dabbled and washed the more it seemed to stir up new combinations of flavours never before conceived. So I shouted and shouted, and at last one of the crew heard, and brought out the small boat and rescued me; most mercifully I had carbolic soap with me, and so managed to at last get clean. The lake is nowhere very deep, but is absolutely full of fish; you constantly see them jumping out of the water for a breath of fresh air, and I don’t blame them. The pools have crowds of small fry, and the larvæ of thousands of insects; indeed, it is “a heaven for mosquitoes and a damp hell for men.” It is this extraordinary profusion of life bred in the water that causes it to be such a fine feeding-ground for the birds, but everything that comes out of that lake is slimy and smelling. In April, when I was at Menzaleh, the birds had not begun nesting, but there was every sign of quite a big Cormorant colony. I counted the sites of more than twenty nests on one island alone, and I saw Cormorants off and on nearly every day of my two weeks’ stay.

Needless to say, the Cormorant is entirely a fish-feeding bird, and usually lives on or near the sea. The fact that a colony has been for so long now established up the river is certainly interesting, and it will be curious to see if these new great water-works do cause any further extension of their area. Mr. Erskine Nicol told me he saw two Cormorants flying down the river in February of this year (1909), at Luxor—one was an adult bird showing a very white head,—and that within his seventeen years of residence he did not think he had ever seen them so far up as Luxor before. The young birds have no pure white on the head, and have the breast a more or less dull greyish-white.

LESSER BLACK-BACKED GULL

Larus fuscus

The Gulls do on the water what the Kites do on the land—they act as scavengers; and it matters not whether you are arriving at Alexandria or on board a steamer at Assoan, you will, alike from end to end of Egypt, find these birds busy, searching for every scrap of waste thrown into the river, which river is the main drain of the country. The use that these birds are is therefore enormous, and they, in common with Vultures and Kites, ought to be protected and on no account shot. This year of 1909 I have seen more of these three species shot than ever before. The wily native who stalks up and down outside hotels with a gun slung over his shoulder, and seizes on unwary newcomers with great promises of apocryphal quail- and snipe-shooting, frequently—so that his patron shall not come home without any bag at all—suggests shooting every poor inoffensive bird within range. That done, the poor Kite or Gull is borne home, and laid out on the hotel steps for the further honour, glory, and kudos of the native shekarry.

It should always be remembered that the immature birds of most species differ materially from the adult: this is the case with all the Gulls, and, I own, makes their identification a matter of considerable difficulty. In the young there is no pure white and pearly grey plumage, but they are dirty-coloured, brown-spotted, rather uninteresting-looking birds, but as they have just as ravenous an appetite as their parents, and as they satisfy that appetite with the filth that is thrown out of a scavenger’s basket, they are fully as useful as the more attractively plumaged adults. Where they can get it, they like fish before anything, be it the sprat of the clear ocean water, or the sweepings of the fish-market. At Damietta, where there is a great

LESSER BLACK-BACKED GULL AND BLACK-HEADED GULL On the river at Cairo.
LESSER BLACK-BACKED GULL AND BLACK-HEADED GULL
On the river at Cairo.

fish-market and salted fish is sent away all over Egypt, the offal from the gutted fish is simply thrown out on to the shore, and work as hard as the Gulls do, they cannot clear all away that is daily added to this pestilential heap. Wherever Gulls come into a scene they add a sort of lightness and brightness to it. This is often felt at sea, where, after days and days of dreary water, at last some Gulls appear and give the needed brightening touch, and wherever they are seen their white wings make a charming point of contrast. Those who know London know what a boon they are to the leaden Thames, and even in sunny Egypt they are a welcome addition to river scenery.

THE BLACK-HEADED GULL

Larus ridibundus

THIS ought to be called the Brown-headed Gull, as the colour is never black. In winter the whole head is practically white, and it is in that plumage that most visitors to Egypt will alone see it.

It is a very lively little Gull; its flight is much lighter than the preceding, and when several are together they can hardly ever keep quiet for long, but from time to time give vent to their peculiar cry, which by some has been likened to the sound of laughter.

Captain Shelley says that, in a year where there was a terrible scourge of locusts, these Gulls were present in large flocks busily engaged in devouring these mischievous insects. In that way, and in the ordinary scavenger work that they share with all other Gulls, they are of great use to the country and should be protected.

I have seen them in ones and twos everywhere up and down the river, but the larger flocks are only to be seen at the great lakes of the Fayoum or along the coast, and I particularly remember, because of the weirdness of the surroundings, one occasion when I saw large flocks on the shores of the Red Sea. It was at Kosseir, and the coast there is alternately gently shelving sandy shore, and jutting-out, flat-topped rocky reefs. To one of these reefs I went as the tide was leaving them exposed, whilst flocks of Gulls and Waders were waiting for their evening meal.

The rock plateau going right out to sea was a coral reef, and the way in which pools led one into another by tunnels was most strange. Then the depths of some were great, as I found by sounding with a long rod, and some were past all sounding and seemed bottomless. It was evening when I got there, and soon became dark night, and it was then that the peculiar beauty of these pools came out, whilst the great flocks of Gulls and some Duck found new delights in them as the receding sea gave them more feeding-ground. Every pool was lighted up by the strange glowing eyes of some cuttle-fish—ever-moving, these jewel-like blue-green lights went passing round and round, sometimes the one becoming two as a turn of its head permitted my seeing both eyes, and then with another curve the two were one. Sometimes these strange lights were very very faint, but as I stood still they came nearer and nearer, and with my eyes riveted on them a most curious illusion followed. Nearer, nearer, stronger, more strong, these strange weird eyes advanced and crept up farther and farther, till time after time it was hard to believe that these glowing orbs had not left the water and were advancing right up to my own face. All the time the quiet of the place was only broken by the curious laughing-like call of the Gulls, and the shrill piping and whistling of the dark, shadowy shore birds.

Besides Gulls, the visitors to the Nile may see Terns, for there are some seven or eight species, but naturally these birds keep nearer the sea than elsewhere, yet it is pleasant to cherish the hope, founded on frequent reports, that Terns as well as several other birds that love the water are somewhat extending their area. Owing to the new barrage schemes making great permanent inland lakes which never existed before, the birds find a new home suitable to them, and which they have already begun to show they thoroughly appreciate. At home and in many other countries, the great reservoirs which supply the cities have always been favourite bird haunts, and it seems that here is one more benefit bestowed on Egypt consequent on British occupation. When at Lake Menzaleh this last winter, one of the most wonderful sights was the number of Terns, and on one occasion when I was trying to get near to Flamingo, a great flock of many hundreds of the large Caspian Tern came near enough for identification.

LIST OF BIRDS

Although the scope of this work is only to point out, by pictures, to the unlearned what birds he will most likely see during a winter in Egypt, yet I have felt that it would be wise to give a list of all the birds, as far as known; for some, turning to these pages, may desire to learn if some one or other bird which they did not see amongst my necessarily limited selection of pictured birds, was an Egyptian bird or not. In the preparation of this list, it goes without saying, I have been constantly indebted to that book, A Handbook to the Birds of Egypt, which, published so long ago as 1872 by Captain C. E. Shelley, still remains the one classic on this subject, and I have adopted, as far as possible, his names for all the birds mentioned. In addition, year after year, some small knowledge has accumulated of new birds, not known in that day to visit this country, and I am particularly indebted to Mr. M. J. Nicoll, assistant-director of the Government Zoological Gardens, Giza, for helping me to make this list as complete as possible.

LIST OF THE BIRDS OF EGYPT