BIRDS IN EGYPT.
The cawing Rooks, and Kites that swim sublime
In still repeated circles, screaming loud,
The Jaye, the Pie, and e’en the boding Owl
Have charms for me.—COWPER.
In the picture of Nature the birds’ place must not be left quite in
blank. The first to greet you in Egypt are two familiar home companions.
As you near the harbour of Alexandria—and even sometimes before you
sight the land—the wagtail comes on board, and, without a moment lost in
reconnoitring, begins to look about the deck for crumbs. He flirts his
tail as usual. Here, in our bird-persecuting part of the world, it means
that he is on the alert; but on the deck of the steamer, that is entering
the harbour of Alexandria, it means, ‘All right. I am not afraid: I am
quite at home. Every one here is glad to see me, and I am glad to see
you. Here no boys throw stones at me.’ Every flirt of his tail sends a
little ripple of pleasure over your heart.
On entering Alexandria your only thought is of what is new and strange:
the last that would occur to you would be that you were about to
encounter an old friend. But the first object that meets your eye, as
you step through the custom-house gate into the street, is a very
old cosmopolitan friend you left in London a few weeks back—the house
sparrow. ‘What!’ you exclaim. ‘You here, you ornithological gamin?’
As you go by rail to Cairo, and as you ascend the river, you are never
long out of sight of a mud-built village. The saddest and sorriest of
habitations for men and women are these Egyptian villages I have ever
anywhere seen. West India negro huts are better-furnished abodes. Their
best-lodged inhabitants are the pigeons. The only storey that is ever
raised above the ground-floor—which is of the ground as well as on it—is
the dovecot. This, therefore, is the only object in a village which
attracts the eye of the passer-by. In the Delta the fashion appears to
be to raise a rude roundish mud tower, full of earthenware pots for the
pigeons to breed in. These are inserted—of course, lying horizontally—in
the mud of which the tower is built. In Upper Egypt these towers have
assumed the square form, about twelve feet each side. Three or four
tiers of branches are carried round the building for the pigeons to
settle on; these are stuck into the wall, and as the branches depart
from the straight line, each according to its own bent, each belt of
branches presents a very irregular appearance. No village is without
its dovecotes. From the summit of the propylæa of the grand Ptolemaic
temple of Edfou, I counted about forty of these dovecotes on the tops of
the mud hovels below me. The number of domestic pigeons in Egypt must
be several times as great as that of the population. I suppose if they
kept pigs they would not keep so many pigeons. They must consume a great
quantity of corn—more, perhaps, than would be required for the pigs of a
pig-eating population as large as that of Egypt.
In going up the river from Cairo, the first birds that put in their
appearance are the pelicans. They are generally in parties of eight or
ten. They are fishing, in a line across the stream. They always keep out
of gun-shot. They loom large, showing about the size of swans, and, as
seen from a distance, of the colour of cygnets. They do not care to go
more than about two hundred miles above Cairo.
All up the river you see herons of several species: like their English
congeners, they are patient watchers for passing fish; and when watching,
more or less solitary.
The wet sand and mud banks are thronged with countless mobs of ducks
of various kinds, of geese, and of other aquatic birds. Experience has
taught them also how far guns carry.
As to the geese, you frequently hear and see overhead large flights
of them. Sometimes as many as four or five flocks are in sight at one
time. They are going to and from their feeding grounds. When aloft they
are generally in some figure; but very far from always, as some say, in
the form of a wedge. Perhaps the figure in which they place themselves
depends on the currents of wind where they are. If they are driving
against the wind, the wedge would of course be the best figure for
them to move in; but if they are going down the wind a line one deep
would be better, as it would give the full help of the current to every
individual of the flock; and this is a figure they are often seen in.
In the lately disinterred temple of Serapis, between the dilapidated
pyramids of Sakkarah, and the marvellous catacomb of the sacred bulls, I
saw, in painted relief, a scene which tells us how geese were fattened
in old Egypt. Men are seated at each end of a table which is covered
with pellets, probably of some kind of meal. Each man has a goose in his
lap, down the throat of which he is cramming one of these pellets. The
priests of Serapis liked their geese fat.
In the neighbourhood of Siout I saw several flocks of flamingoes on the
wing. As they approached with the sun upon them, they showed like discs
of silver, supported on black wings. When they had passed, the eye was
charmed with their backs of rosy pink.
Among the land birds the commonest in the village palm groves are the
Egyptian turtle-dove, and the hopoe. Where there are so many pigeons
you might expect a great many hawks: these you see of several species.
Larks are everywhere in the fields. You frequently fall in with bevies of
quail, and with plovers. A small owl is common: I heard and saw it during
the day-time, in the tamarisks near the pool in the sacred enclosure of
Karnak, and elsewhere.
Our English rook—it has a wide range, being a denizen of Africa as well
as of every part of Europe—appears among the birds of Egypt. My bedroom
at Zech’s, late Shepheard’s, Hotel at Cairo was off the back gallery,
looking across a road on to a large garden. Exactly opposite the window
was the sakia which supplied the garden with water. The creaking and
shrieking, every morning, of its lumbering wooden wheel whilst it was
being worked by a patient, plodding bullock, was far from unpleasant
to one who wished to become acquainted with the sights and sounds of
Egypt. In this garden were many palms. These were tenanted by a colony
of rooks. I was, day after day, interested in noting that they had just
the same bearing and manners as their English relatives. Like them, they
sought the society of man, and seemed to watch his doings with the same
kind of satisfied observation, accompanied with the same harsh cries,
expressive of security and confidence. They were in every respect quite
undistinguishable from our London rooks, and those that affect our rural
homesteads. I looked upon them with the thought that just as we, at this
day, are pleased with their social and familiar ways, so must, many
thousand years ago, have been the old Egyptians.
The banks of the river are full of bird life, as every bird in Egypt must
daily come to the river to drink.