THE IBIS. 



NEW SERIES. 



No. XXI. JANUARY 1870. 



I. — Notes on the Birds of the Peninsula of Sinai. 

 By Claude W. Wyatt, of the late Sinai Surveying Expedition. 



The feathered inhabitants of the peninsula of Sinai, as might 

 be expected from the nature of the country, are not very nume- 

 rous, especially in the winter months, during which season 

 most of the birds that form the subject of this paper were ob- 

 tained ; and many of them can only be regarded as accidental 

 or occasional visitors, since of several species I only met with 

 single examples ; but as it is a country little known to ornitho- 

 logists, perhaps a few short notes upon them may not be unac- 

 ceptable to some of the readers of 'The Ibis,^ together with a 

 slight sketch of the route I followed. 



On the 11th of November, at 4 o^clock in the morning, I 

 crossed the Red Sea. The moon and stars were shining brightly ; 

 not a ripple discurbed the water; the hoisting of the sail was 

 only an excuse for laziness on the part of the sailors, who, at 

 the same time, just dropped their oars into the water, prefer- 

 ring to wait for the breeze, which usually springs up from the 

 north about 6 o'clock, and would in a couple of hours take 

 us down to Ain Musa, where I expected to find the rest of the 

 party, who had started the day before. Very slowly we ap- 

 proached the opposite shore. The beautiful night at last gave way 

 to the early morning, but the sail hung as heavily as when we 

 first started ; so we decided upon landing and performing the rest 



N. S. — VOL. VI. B 



