234 RAMBLES OF A NATURALIST. 



his pinions gently waving rather than flying, but all the 

 while with head and beak pointing downwards intently 

 scanning the limpid lake, whose glassy surface mirrors him 

 again and again. His tail is on the move continually. It 

 is the governor or rudder by which he steers. Every now 

 and then, as he flies along, he shakes himself up with a kind of 

 shiver. What this is for I do not know, but I describe him 

 as I have seen him in that glorious country, which I shall 

 always look back to as a naturalist's paradise. Now his 

 wings seem to go back with the force of the air, and he 

 strikes the water aslant. Without an effort he rises again 

 and passes on, but seeing a fish, or some floating matter 

 which he had nearly overlooked, pauses, checks himself, 

 turns downwards at right angles, and plunges into the water 

 with a splash. 



•^209. White-winged Tern, Hydrochelidoji leucoptera 



(Meisn). 



This is much scarcer than the Whiskered. We shot four 

 at the Faioum where I suspect it breeds, and one on the 

 Nile. The latter was on the ist of May; it was with two 

 others. The gizzard was full of flies. I also was shown 

 three which had been killed at Damietta, and one which 

 had been killed at Alexandria. This is the handsomest of 

 all the Terns. Von Heuglin seems the only writer who has 

 met with it. He says that this species and the Whiskered 

 Tern are common all the year in Egypt and Nubia, and 

 that in July he has often shot young birds which had 

 evidently been hatched there (Syst. Ueb., p. 70). 



210. SCISSORBILL, Rhyncops flavirostris, Vieill. 



A sight of this strange bird is a gain which those have 

 who visit Egypt late in the season. Ours was, I believe, 



