44 Berney, Ornithologist in Egypt and Palestine. [,sf Ti 



only trouble is rheumatism, of which I have had a couple of 

 touches. The first did not put me off duty, but the second put 

 me into the hospital in Cairo. 



Mr. Nicholls, of the well-kept Cairo Zoological Gardens, gave 

 up a lot of his time working through the collection of skins with 

 me, to help me identify birds that I had noted in Egypt and 

 Palestine. The colony of Egrets that had their headquarters in 

 the Gardens have considerably increased, and there are now two 

 colonies. These, together with many other useful species, are 

 now closely protected all the year round, the facts being brought 

 to the knowledge of the natives by sheets with coloured figures 

 of the principal birds. 



The Convalescent Camp I went to after coming out of the 

 hospital was in clear sight of the Pyramids, and within a few 

 minutes' run in the tram of the Zoological Gardens. I had always 

 pictured the birds of Egypt and Palestine as being African and 

 Asian, and it came as somewhat of a surprise to me to find how 

 exceedingly European — not to say British — they are. During 

 last winter (November-February) I was camped on a hopeless 

 patch of desert just off the Canal, and during that time identified 

 ten species of birds, eight of which were British. The most 

 common was the Sparrow, also the White Wagtail. The former 

 is our old friend of the house-tops, but a long residence i^i this 

 sandy country has caused it to take on a somewhat dusty hue. 

 The White Wagtail, a very sweet little bird, comes to Egypt 

 during the period mentioned in great numbers, when you will 

 always see half a dozen in sight — sometimes 40 or 50 — about the 

 horse lines, where they are attracted by the files. Kites are 

 always with us. Others that I noted were the Short-toed Lark, 

 Crested Lark, Kestrel, Barn Owl, Quail (very similar to ours), 

 Norfolk Plover, Wheatears, Whinchats, and Hooded Crows. An 

 interesting bird that I saw occasionally was the Hoopoe, and a 

 very graceful and pretty bird was the Cream-coloured Courser. 

 Bee-eaters often passed overhead, but I could not identify them ; 

 there are three species in Egypt. A bird I did not expect to see 

 out on the desert was the Black-headed Gull. A couple of 

 hundred of them frequented the camp for some weeks, having, 

 I suppose, followed the Canal along. I used to feed them at 

 times with meat that I got frohi the cook-house. They reminded 

 me of a trip I made to a broad in Norfolk, where some thousands 

 of them were nesting, and again of the time when I have fed them 

 with bread in the winter at London Bridge, the Gulls hovering 

 and taking the bread from my fingers. 



In Palestine I noticed White Storks, Egyptian Vultures, Ravens, 

 Chukar Partridges. My list is a very short one, but I have no 

 means of collecting, so that the small birds piactically all escape 

 identification. A pair of Partridges had a nest with nine or ten 

 f'ggs (June) just at the back of one of our camps. Shells fell in 

 the vicinity daily, and one morning a Turkish " whizzbang " 

 shell landed within killing distance of the nest ; but, as there were 



