SIX months' bird collecting in egvpt. 105 



Green and a Common Sandpiper, which had been feeding- 

 unnoticed on the mud, fly up, but settle again at the end of 

 the pond ; while a flock of Temminck's Stints, too accus- 

 tomed to the noise of a village to be disturbed, only stop 

 feeding for a minute, and then resume again, running about 

 and feeding as if their very lives depended upon getting 

 through a peck of marsh worms by sundown. 



The villages are generally about a mile apart, and at 

 every village there is a Palm grove. They are seldom far 

 from the banks of the Nile, which at this time of the year 

 is low, uncovering many a tempting sandbank, where flocks 

 of Herons preen themselves, and the Egret — the loveliest 

 of all known birds — performs its solitary ballet dance. A 

 word must be given to the sandbanks. Here the Ziczac 

 Plover, that most characteristic of Egyptian birds, flies 

 at the intruder, and with a winnowing motion of its armed 

 wings endeavours to intimidate him, and reiterating its 

 harsh cry, drives the crocodile, which had come out to bask, 

 to his lair at the bottom of the river. Here too the gay 

 " Pluvian " flies low over the surface of the water, and here 

 six Garganeys, the last left of all the Duck tribe which 

 swarmed a few weeks ago, disport themselves in a back- 

 water such as one sees in many a tidal harbour. 



The most careful steering will not prevent Diabeyhas 

 from running on to sandbanks, and sticking hard and fast 

 there. When this happens there is nothing for it but to 

 tug and strain and heave and bellow until they are got off 

 again, and this is sometimes a work of many hours, even 

 occasionally of days. Meanwhile the mortified passenger 

 sees the cangia and the lighter nicrkcb pass him by with 

 impunity. But this delay is an opportunity for striking 

 inland to where the desert and cultivation meet, a limit 

 defined for miles and miles, which the shifting sands may 

 modify but can never obliterate. 



The last field is soon reached, and there is no animal 



