SIX months' bird collecting in EGYPT. I/I 



are as much at home among the mud-built hovels of an 

 Arab village as in the streets of Belgravia ; and their plum- 

 age is brighter and cleaner. The roofs of the fellahin's huts, 

 built of mud and straw, are a favourite resort for a flock to 

 cluster upon, or small road-side bushes of the long-thorned 

 tribe. About the middle of March they betake themselves 

 to the fields of ripening corn, and I sometimes roused very 

 large flocks indeed. Compared with English Sparrows, the 

 crown of the head is decidedly greyer.* 



107. Spanish Sparrow, Passer salicicola, Vieillot. 



As to the relative abundance of this species, my observa- 

 tions lead me to agree with Captain Shelley (Ibis, 1871, 

 p. 141), but certainly not with his predecessors. I only met 

 with it in the Delta, and there it was far less numerous than 

 the Common Sparrow (P. doniesticus, Linn.)t 



108. Trumpeter Bullfinch, Erythrospiza githaginea 

 (Licht.) ; PyrrJiula payraudxi, Audouin. 



First seen at Minieh, after which hardly a day passed but 

 the clear tinkling note of the Trumpeter Bullfinch was heard, 

 and on some occasions, as at Gebel Silsilis, very large flocks 

 of them were seen. It was an old Algerian acquaintance, 



* I have more than once met with a variety of the (cock) Sparrow in 

 England, having the throat and chest, which normally should be black, 

 a rather bright chocolate brown. 



t Mr. Hazel states in " Naturalist" for 1853, p. 20., that a FrlngiUa 

 Hispaniolensis was shot in some woods near Portsmouth, and after- 

 wards placed in the Museum of the Philosophical Society. From 

 enquiries I have made I believe that museum is now broken up, but 

 the specimen may be at Haslar Hospital Museum. 



