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
[Illustration: 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
Plumage of back brown, becoming black as it approaches the tail,
which is also black with white edging to outer feathers; head and
neck black with green metallic lustre; chest and lower parts white;
the scapulars, long and pointed, are blue and black and white; wing
has a metallic green bar, the small covert feathers are a very
delicate blue-grey, and the flight feathers are dark brown; the
breast and flanks are a brilliant chestnut; legs orange; beak
black; eyes brown. The female is a dull brown colour with dark
spots, and its bill often has looked to me even larger than the
male's. Length, 20·5 inches.
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_
Head and neck chestnut-brown; a patch of green encircles the eyes
and cheeks, a light buff streak divides the green from the brown;
neck, back, and flanks grey, composed of delicate alternate black
and white wavy lines. Scapulars white with rich black on their
outer webs; green metallic bar on wing; under-parts white; breast
spotted with buffish-black; under-tail coverts a clear, brilliant
yellow-buff; beak and legs black; eyes brown. The female looks
smaller than the male, and is a sober-coloured brown bird, with
darker, almost black, markings. Length, 15·5 inches.
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
General colour of plumage a rosy white; the larger flight-feathers
of wing, black; beak grey; pouch, a bright yellow; eyes red. Entire
length, 60 inches.
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
[Illustration: 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]
[7] I regret, however, to have to write that this idea of
self-sacrifice is really all bunkum. The tradition is, that when hard
up, and the offspring were calling out for the food that was not, the
mother bird would lacerate her own bosom and with her own life-blood
feed and save her loved ones. Ages ago some poor, short-sighted man
got this extraordinary notion from apparently watching the way the
young are fed. The Pelican belongs to an order of birds that disgorges
the food it has caught, in this case fish, into the upturned mouths
of the young. Had this first short-sighted one only known that the
Pelican's Hebrew name Kâath means "to vomit," this bird would hardly
have been accredited with virtues it does not possess, or been
painted, sculptured, and enshrined in thousands of holy places.
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_
Plumage dark bluish-black over head, breast, body; dull
greenish-brown on wings, each feather margined with a darker tone;
a pure white patch on cheeks, and another on the flanks; feathers
on top of head elongated and edged with white; beak black at tip,
yellow at base; part of the pouch which is without feathers, blue;
legs black; eyes green. Length, 36 inches.
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
[Illustration: 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
Back and wings dark slaty blackish grey; primaries black, with a
large white spot on first primary near the point; rest of plumage
pure white; legs and gill yellow, latter with a red spot on lower
mandible; eyes yellow, eyelids red. Length, 23 inches.
In all probability whenever a gull is seen it is most likely to be this
one, as in my experience throughout Egypt it is, I think, the commonest
of all. The next in order is the Black-headed Gull, but, unfortunately,
in the winter months it is without its black cap, which causes it to
escape notice.
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
[Illustration: 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
General plumage white below, wings a delicate lavender grey, the
large flight-feathers black and white at their tips; head and
throat in breeding dress, a dark brown, in winter white; legs and
beak red; eyes brown. Length, 15 inches.