66 Rev. H. B. Tristram on the Ornithology of Palestine. 



Ammon) and Gerasli (Gerasa). In these lonely spots, utterly 

 forsaken of man, it is to be found in myriads, building undis- 

 turbed, in company with the Hooded Crow, in the chinks and 

 crevices of the glorious ruins, sometimes on the tops of columns, 

 and even heaping a barrowful of sticks on the top of an acces- 

 sible stair in a church tower, in one of which we took the eggs. 

 The eggs are exactly like those of the common species, nor are 

 they perceptibly smaller. We obtained specimens of the bird at 

 all times of the year, and did not find any seasonal variation in 

 the plumage. The principal distinction is in the sharp outline 

 of the black plumage of the head, which barely reaches the oc- 

 ciput, the wide light- coloured collar, and the greyish mottling 

 of the whole of the rest of the plumage, especially on the lower 

 parts. 



We were riding across the plain from Nablous on the road to 

 Jerusalem, when, for the first time, we noticed the Rooks fear- 

 lessly following the Ai*ab ploughmen at their work. They 

 seemed to smell powder as promptly as their fellows in England ; 

 but we obtained two, which, although December was far ad- 

 vanced, had no denudation of the basal portion of the mandibles. 

 We occasionally met with small flocks in the cultivated districts 

 of Central Palestine, but did not come across any rookeries, 

 unless the gathering at the Mosque of Omar in Jerusalem may 

 be so termed. Jerusalem and Nablous seem the headquarters 

 of the race ; indeed in a country so bare of wood the Rook 

 must be as hard put to for a home as in central France after the 

 Revolution had stripped the chateaux of their ancestral timber. 

 At Jerusalem we found the species very abundant in winter, 

 congregating in the sacred enclosure of the mosque every even- 

 ing, along with Jackdaws, a few Hooded Crows, and the two 

 species of Ravens, as familiarly as it does with the first of these 

 in England. The different species appeared to go out to feed 

 together, and returned in consort to roost every evening. I am 

 not certain that I observed them on the occasion of my latest 

 visit to Jerusalem in April. Certainly if they remained it was 

 in much diminished numbers, and probably they had at that 

 period sought more congenial places for nidification. But it is 

 possible that some remained ; for all the species were so inter- 



