276 Phillips, Birds of Sinai. [£g 



We only spent three days at Feran and then moved south to the 

 convent of St. Catherine. On the way, passing up the rugged 

 defile, Nekb-el-Hawa, or pass of the winds, we met our first Rose 

 Finches. This rare rock -loving Carpodacus lives only on the highest 

 and roughest parts of the country, keeping in little scattered troops. 

 It is a very wild and restless bird and what it manages to live upon 

 I do not know. I saw it again only at Petra. Zedlitz (1912), says 

 that the bird does not breed till its second year. From my speci- 

 mens I should say that both sexes were rose-colored when adult, 

 but others have described the females as plain colored, like the 

 young males. 



In the garden of the convent of St. Catherine there were a few 

 birds but nothing that we had not seen before. A side trip to Um 

 Shomer, a high mountain in the south, took us over an absolutely 

 birdless region with nothing but Desert Larks and Crag Martins 

 at the rarest intervals. One morning at sunrise I found myself 

 high up on a spur of Um-Shomer. I thought I never had seen such 

 desolate grandeur. Westward about fifty miles of the Gulf of Suez 

 was in sight, bathed in a light mist, while a long stretch of the Gulf 

 of Akaba limited the east and northeast view, backed by the low 

 peaked mountains of Midian. The whole rugged south end of 

 Sinai was spread out like a relief map, and not a sound came to my 

 ears. — A single Eagle soared about the crags of Um-Shomer, 

 perhaps looking for a young ibex, but he was all alone. Far out 

 on the Gulf of Suez as the mist cleared I could see with my glass 

 the big steamers plying to the ends of the world. 



Some of the scarcity of birds in Sinai may have been due to lack 

 of rain. Usually rain and snow fall every winter, but now for 

 several years there has been practically a continual drought. The 

 vegetation is much reduced and every sayal tree is cut back for 

 camel food. 



From the convent to Akaba at the head of the long gulf of that 

 name, we did not see many birds. For days we journeyed along 

 the beach of the gulf meeting very rarely a Sandpiper, or one or two 

 European Kingfishers. At intervals there were groups of palm 

 trees with a few Warblers, Chats and Wheatears about them. 



At Akaba we had to wait eight days for our mules. A long palm 

 grove and the remains of quite a large town with a Turkish fort 



