190 EGYPTIAN BIRDS 



doesn't, you know, mean wilderness at all ; the 

 ordinary wilderness means a sandy, deserty sort 

 of place, but this wilderness, we are told, means 

 a wet sort of watery place. How nice it is 

 to have these clear explanations from the best 

 authorities of all those mysteries that darkened our 

 early years ! The Pelican lives entirely on fish, and 

 is therefore never far from water. Considering its 

 rather clumsy form it is fairly agile, and it has been 

 noted that it can and does perch freely on boughs 

 that bend and swing with its weight when at large, 

 and that in captivity at the London Zoological 

 Gardens one habitually used to perch on the thin 

 corrugated wire fence that bisects their small 

 enclosure, an almost acrobatic feat one would not 

 have expected it capable of performing. 



In books the statement has been made and often 

 repeated that the Pelican breeds in Egypt, and my 

 visit to Lake Menzaleh was very much taken just 

 to settle whether it and Flamingoes did or did 

 not breed there. I found they did not, and I 

 should think it is very unlikely that they ever did, 

 as though the lake is large the fact that fishermen's 

 boats go all over it would hardly make it a safe 

 place for these big birds ever to nest in. 



