24 SOME BIRDS OF THE CANARY ISLANDS 



luxury and eaten by the well-to-do farmers. I tasted 

 some of this once at a farmhouse, mixed with a little 

 sugar it is not at all bad ; the people at the farm also 

 showed me how they ground the wheat by hand, 

 between two large mill-stones. The children in Fuer- 

 teventura have beautifully white teeth, as a result of 

 eating gofio. 



The weather having in some degree improved we 

 now moved out of our shelter and walked along the side 

 of one of the mountains, and although we made a large 

 circuit round, I do not think we saw a bird of any de- 

 scription. The prospect also looked bad again, so we 

 turned our steps towards home. In the vicinity of La 

 Oliva I saw, perched on the top of a cactus, a Shrike, 

 which turned out to be a specimen of the Algerian Grey 

 Shrike, a bird which we found very common near the 

 villages in Fuerteventura, where they were often to be 

 seen in the small enclosures round the houses. I had 

 not previously noticed this bird in Tenerife, as it is very 

 locally distributed in that island. The peasants call this 

 Shrike Alcairon, the meaning of which word I was not 

 able to find out, but it is of Moorish origin. 



The photographs reproduced I obtained a few days 

 after our arrival, the nests being generally placed in 

 almond trees, which grow sparingly about the houses 

 in most of the villages in Fuerteventura, constituting a 

 thick isolated bush, and during the time that I was in 

 the island, generally speaking, you had only to find 

 your almond tree to find your Shrike's nest. 



The nests were in all cases made of thorny twigs 

 forming a good sized structure, with the cavity very 

 deep, open at the top and lined thickly with wool and 



