82 EGYPTIAN BIRDS 



Sparrow or two looking after some of the drop- 

 pings from the nose-bags. 



In winter they get spread about and are 

 not very noticeable, but when the corn ripens 

 then they all seem to multiply in extraordinary 

 fashion. Clouds of them rise up and fly round, 

 startled by the loud cry or stone slung by the 

 ragged urchin of a bird scarer. I remember well 

 Leighton's picture of a bird scarer, showing an 

 athletic young fellow, stripped to the waist, poised 

 on one foot, body bent back, hurling the stone as 

 David did at Goliath. But in the years I have 

 known Egypt I have never seen in real life any- 

 thing approaching that picture, for it is generally a 

 blear-eyed small boy, half-clothed and hideously 

 dirty, who, standing on the pathway, yells dis- 

 cordantly and purposely just as you pass him, 

 sometimes accompanying the cry with a mild little 

 jerky underhand throw of some clot of hardened 

 soil which possibly breaks in mid-air before reach- 

 ing the birds. So no lives are lost, and the birds 

 just fly away contemptuously to another part of 

 the field. In Nubia it is different, and there girls 

 as well as boys do really sling stones, and with some 

 effect. I do not think there is any peculiarity 

 of the life-history of the Sparrow in Egypt that is 



