6o Bird Notes from the Nile. 



CHAPTER VI. 



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"These birds have very joyful thoughts; think you 

 they sing 

 Like poets, from the vanity of song ? 

 Or have they any sense of what they sing ? 

 And would they praise the heaven for what they 

 have?" 



— Tennyson. 



THE bird-life in Egypt is certainly an 

 added delight to anyone who comes 

 to this enchanted land, and watch- 

 ing, however superficially, their strange 

 little lives enhances the interest of a 

 journey up and down the Nile. For 

 there are birds everywhere. We saw 

 them, and heard their voices continually, 

 all day, the twitter of the Sparrows, the 

 " hoop " of the Hoopoes, the cooing of 

 Doves, and the crying of Kites, and the 

 endless and varied notes of the song-birds. 

 And after the sun had gone down, when 

 we were sleeping on the deck of our boat 

 or out in the desert, I would often listen 

 with dreamy ears to the hooting of an 

 owl or the weird cry of a curlew or 



