No. 1. — Notes on a collection of birds from the Sudan. 

 By John C. Phillips. 



The following collection was obtained by Dr. G. M. Allen and the 

 writer on the Blue-Nile and Binder Rivers, in Sennar, Sudan, from 

 December 25, 1912 to February 25, 1913. A few birds were also 

 collected at Luxor and Cairo on the way up and down the Nile. A 

 visit was made to the mountain at Fazogli, a place which Mr. A. L. 

 Butler tells me he, found very rich in birds in May. Our visit in 

 January yielded very little indeed, and this suggests considerable 

 local seasonal movements of resident species, which is borne out by 

 the various excellent papers of Butler on Sudan birds (Ibis, 1905, 

 1908, and 1909). Since the Sudanese birds have been rather carefully 

 studied in recent years, by Reichenow, Erlanger, Butler, Ogilvie- 

 Grant, and others, it is not worth while to append many notes. 

 I have therefore confined myself mostly to the status of some of the 

 species as we found them in the winter months. 



Many of the winter birds of this region are European migrants, 

 some are visitors from Egypt, while a large number are resident spe- 

 cies and referable mostly to Abyssinian types. Thus the avifauna 

 of the upper Blue-Nile is quite different from that of the White-Nile 

 on account of this Abyssinian element. There is no true desert near 

 the Blue-Nile and Dinder Rivers, the soil being a deep loess deposit, 

 the so-called "cotton-soil," which in the dry season becomes baked 

 and cracked into great cakes. These contraction-cracks make travel 

 very unconfortable. The entire region is wooded with a widely scat- 

 tered thorn-forest, nearly leafless by mid-winter. The ground is 

 covered by high grass which is largely burnt off in December and 

 January. Along the banks of the river the scenery is a little more 

 diversified. Palms, fig trees, Adansonias, and vines form thickets in 

 which many species hide while going to water. A few isolated rocky 

 hills or gebels protrude abruptly from the plain. P^rom Gebel 

 Fazogli eastward they begin to form the foothills of Abyssinia. 



The larger birds we did not have time to collect or preserve to any 

 extent. Among the more striking may be mentioned the enormous 

 numbers of European cranes present on the lower Blue-Nile, and also 

 the Crowned cranes in much smaller numbers. Anatiflae are scarce 

 on the Blue-Nile, on account of its sandy character, the Egyptian 



