THE AUK: 



A QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF 

 ORNITHOLOGY. 



Vol. xxxii. July, 1915. No. 3. 



SOME BIRDS FROM SINAI AND PALESTINE. 



BY JOHN C. PHILLIPS. 



Plate XVII. 



We left Suez on March 22, 1914, for a brief trip through the 

 Sinai Peninsula, and then to Jerusalem, via Akaba and the east 

 side of the Dead Sea. Mr. Mann was to pursue insects and 

 reptiles and both of us put in our spare moments chasing birds and 

 trapping mammals. As much of the route lay through a desert, 

 our catch was small, except for the reptiles. Mammals, though in 

 places numerous, were hard to trap and many specimens were 

 stolen by jackals or eaten by ants before daylight, so that we often 

 despaired of bringing back a representative lot. 



This journey takes one through several very different types of 

 country. The bare desert around Suez, very similar to the deserts 

 of Egypt; then the rugged Sinai plateau with peaks up to 8500 

 feet in height; the low deserts around Akaba, with an Arabian 

 and Dead Sea fauna; the bare-wind swept 5000 foot plateau east 

 of the Dead Sea depression; and lastly the oleander and cane 

 jungles of the Dead Sea and its affluents, with a sub-tropical fauna 

 and flora, and an altitude as low as 1300 feet beneath the level of 

 the sea. s 



When you leave Suez behind, you enter upon the worst stage of 

 the journey. The spring sun is scorching from nine o'clock till 

 four, and the level stretches of gravel and limestone are hardly 



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