Some Notes on a few Egyptian Desert Birds. 33


Another variety of Sand Grouse is the Senegal Sand

Grouse (Ptetocles senegallus') ; it is a much rarer bird, but now and

again those who search for it, may find it! or a lucky chance

may lead the seeker to its feeding ground. But it is far from the

Nile, and by unfrequented paths, that the searcher must travel.

The Senegal is much the same size as the Singed Sand Grouse,

but it is distinctly lighter in colour and it has not the black

“ waist belt ” that looks so smart across the breast of the Singed

variety.


Rarer still is the Coronetted Sand Grouse (Pteroclus coro-

natus). It is found in Nubia and the Northern Sudan ; and in

colouring imitates the ground on which it nestles and cowers, so

exactly, that it is almost invisible till it moves its head and

shows the black on chin and neck, which is its distinguishing

feature. It is rather a smaller bird than either of the other Sand

Grouse.


This list of birds might be very greatly added to if those

were included which inhabit the river banks, where the desert

conies down nearly to the water’s edge, and the line of cultivation

is narrowed to a strip of beans and lupins, tamarisk bushes,

sont trees and Palms. But these birds can scarcely be classed as

purely desert birds, as they more constantly feed on the mud

banks and in the cultivated patches, and roost and build in the

fringe of trees.


I hope that a sufficient number of true desert birds have

been mentioned to show that the solemn silent desert-world, is

not the “pays mort” that it is proverbially understood to be, and

that a weary wanderer may be cheered by the sweet chirping and

songs of many “ feathered choristers,” and that the man of

science, to whom the study of bird-life is an absorbing occupation

will find in the wilderness much material for observation and

research.



