278 Phillips, Birds of Sinai. [iixty 



running water and a good deal of vegetation — even juniper trees 

 among the crags. The place is justly famous as a goal for tourists 

 and is destined to be much visited in the future. Here we found a 

 great many migrants and saw for the first time the Palestine Sun- 

 bird. This truly African bird pushes up through the Dead Sea 

 basin and has been found in summer as far north as Beyrout. In 

 the cliffs of Petra were colonies of that noisy and disagreeable Rock 

 Sparrow, Petronia petronia, and occasionally a pair of Tristram's 

 Grackles, whose song has been so greatly admired by nearly all 

 travellers in southern Palestine. Here again we met a good number 

 of rose finches, although they have never been recorded outside 

 Sinai before. These Petra finches turn out to be so much smaller 

 than the Sinai birds that I have ventured to give them a new name. 

 At Petra, too, the tamarisk bushes were full of migrating gold- 

 finches and black capped warblers, and from this time on, the gold- 

 finch became the commonest bird. The blue-rock pigeons, which 

 I have not mentioned before, were found here and there in Sinai, 

 and at Petra and farther north there were many, but wary to a 

 degree. I never could account for the wariness of all species of 

 birds hereabouts, a fact commented upon by Zedlitz, (1912). 



We had such hard luck with our mouse traps at Petra that we 

 had to pull them up. The jackals robbed the line as neatly as the 

 wolverines of our northern wilds are said to do. 



From Petra our road lay along the edge of the great Moab 

 plateau. The barley was nearly ripe and the fields were full of 

 Larks and Ortolans with here and there a Stork. These latter 

 were astonishingly tame. 



At Wady Kerak we made a side-trip to the south end of the Dead 

 Sea. The heat there was really very trying but we obtained a 

 few birds, among them the rare little Moabitic Sparrow whose 

 range is perhaps the smallest in the world, as it is only known from 

 a few patches of jungle in this immediate region. He looks like a 

 gaudy but miniature English Sparrow with a yellow spot on each 

 side of his throat. 



Around the south end of the Dead Sea at this time (May 7) 

 there were many birds. Arabs were just harvesting their grain, 

 preparatory to leaving the Dead Sea for the better climate of the 

 uplands. There were many Turtle-Doves, Blue-rocks, Hey's 



