Ornitholnfjij of Cijprus. 571 



There are at jM()r[)li()u, Liniassol, and in a good many other 

 parts of the island, marshes of some extent, where fair wihl- 

 fowl and snipe shooting is obtainable in winter. 



There are approximately a quarter of a million inhabitants. 



The published information concerning the avifauna of 

 Cyprus is fairly plentiful. Amongst the constant string ofc" 

 visitors to the island, even during the times of the Lusignan 

 Kings, not a few wrote accounts of their travels, and from 

 these records ^ we can occasionally gather stray notes on tho 

 birds which attracted the attention of the early travellers. 

 Thus, about 133G, one learns from a West})halian cleric that 

 a nobleman at the Court of Ungues IV. (the ninth monarch 

 of the Lusignan dynasty) kept ten or eleven falconers with 

 special pay and allowances ; from another legal visitor in 

 1394 one gathers that King Jacques 1. owned three hundred 

 hawks of all kinds; a third gentleman receives from that King 

 a gift of one hundred partridges; in 1508 a Tyrolese stranger 

 praises the melodious singing of the Avild birds ; the doves 

 and very fat partridges delight the heart of a priest of Brie 

 in 1533. John Locke, an Englishman who visited the 

 island in 1553, gives a long and accurate account of the 

 Griffon Vulture and the first — so far as I am aware — notice 

 of the trade, even then well established, in pickled or 

 marinaded " Beecaficos," of which he states "they annually 

 send almost 1200 jarres or pots to Venice." Many subse- 

 quent writers refer to this article of diet, still a favourite 

 island dainty. 



Quails and Wood-Pigeons figure in a Jew's letter written 

 in 1563, detailing the price of Cyprus commodities. 



From the Seigneur de Villamont of Brittany wc learn in 

 1589 that it was the practice for the Turkish Pasha of 

 Cyprus to commandeer on behalf of the Sultan, under penalty 

 of death, all falcons caught by the peasantry on the cliffs of 

 Cape Gata near Limassol — the villagers luring the hawks by 

 means of pigeon-decoys and capturing them in net entangle- 

 ments, and in return for these services living rent and tax 

 free. From the same authority we hear of " red and black 



* ' Excerpta Cypria,' bv C. D. Cobbani, C.M.G. 1908 



2 Q 2 



