SIX months' bird collecting in egypt. 215 



evening, and we did not discern them until a shot, fired at 

 a passing bird, put them up. Then the whole air was 

 peopled. Many were the conjectures which might have 

 been heard on our Diabeyha as to what they were, and we 

 finally resolved that they must be Numidian Cranes ; but 

 this great flock was as nothing to what we saw on the 25th 

 of March. On that day I was just thinking of getting out 

 of bed — it was about 6 a.m., for I always rose early — when 

 the waiter tapped at my door and pronounced the magic 

 word wis, which literally means a Goose, but which was 

 employed by that functionary to designate any large bird 

 which he thought we should like. I whipped on my clothes 

 with something less than the speed of " greased lightning," 

 and on coming up on to the deck beheld an extraordinary 

 spectacle. On the sandbanks before me, motionless and 

 still asleep,- were three huge regiments of Storks, looking 

 for all the world like great herds of sheep pasturing on the 

 wolds of Yorkshire. I judged that in the largest of those 

 " cohorts " there might be a thousand birds, but the others 

 were not much less. I shot one with my rifle, and im- 

 mediately the air was filled with them, each with his legs 

 sticking out behind him, and a red beak appearing from 

 between his great wings. After circling, one above another, 

 in concentric rings (of which the highest seemed the small- 

 est) for half an hour, during which the sky seemed alive 

 with them, they took themselves ofif in a northerly direction 

 to seek some safer quarters. 



Besides these vast hordes, which I must say were even a 

 greater phenomenon than the living islands of Ducks on 

 lake Menzaleh, I now and then came upon much smaller 

 flocks halting in the desert ; and very hungry and unsociable 

 they appeared to be, each a hundred yards or so from his 

 neighbour, and wrapped up in contemplation of the dreary 

 scene around him. 



