206 RAMBLES OF A NATURALIST. 



Crane came to Lower Egypt in autumn ; but the statement 

 made to him by some Egyptians that it came there from 

 the south was wrong. 



169. Heron, Ardea cinerea, Linn.; " Balachoun." 



The grey English Heron is a very common bird in Egypt 

 and resident, but its numbers are probably diminished in 

 the summer. They are very fond of standing in parties of 

 a dozen at the extremity of a sandbank when they are not 

 fishing, where they can command a good view round. 

 Upon these sands of Egypt they look almost white in the 

 hot glare of the eastern sun. I observed some about the 

 lofty ledges of Gebel-Abou-Foeder, where the mountains 

 rise in a precipice on the east side. They are of stupendous 

 height, and this is considered the most dangerous place on 

 the Nile. There were numbers more on the cliffs beneath 

 the Coptic convent of Gebel-Tair (i.e. the mountain of a 

 bird). I dare say they breed there. These cliffs are about 

 two hundred feet high. Those at Abou-Foeder are higher 

 still. 



We shot several specimens on the Nile, but none so fine 

 as a very old bird which I shot at the Faioum. I have 

 often noticed some rusty yellow on the carpal joint, but in 

 this one there was also a considerable amount of it on the 

 lower portion of the fore-neck. Two, got about the end of 

 April, were still in immature plumage. Fish is their general 

 food : one fellow had eleven good-sized ones in his throat. 

 It is possible that they themselves are occasionally made 

 prey of by the crocodiles, as one was seen to snap at a 

 Heron on the edge of a sandbank. Vierthaler, in his Orni- 

 thological Diary on the Blue Nile, says that he and Brehm 

 observed unmistakable traces of a quarrel between a Croco- 

 dile and a Crane, in which the former was victorious. 



