THE CORMORANT 195 



get clean. The lake is nowhere very deep, but 

 is absolutely full of fish ; you constantly see them 

 jumping out of the water for a breath of fresh air, 

 and I don't blame them. The pools have crowds 

 of small fry, and the larvas of thousands of insects ; 

 indeed, it is " a heaven for mosquitoes and a damp 

 hell for men." It is this extraordinary profusion 

 of life bred in the water that causes it to be such a 

 fine feeding-ground for the birds, but everything 

 that comes out of that lake is slimy and smelling. 

 In April, when I was at Menzaleh, the birds had 

 not begun nesting, but there was every sign of 

 quite a big Cormorant colony. I counted the sites 

 of more than twenty nests on one island alone, and 

 I saw Cormorants off and on nearly every day of 

 my two weeks' stay. 



Needless to say, the Cormorant is entirely a 

 fish-feeding bird, and usually lives on or near 

 the sea. The fact that a colony has been for so 

 long now established up the river is certainly in- 

 teresting, and it will be curious to see if these 

 new great water - works do cause any further 

 extension of their area. Mr. Erskine Nicol told 

 me he saw two Cormorants flying down the river 

 in February of this year (1909), at Luxor — one was 

 an adult bird showing a very white head, — and 



