A Bird Yarn from the Sea.



341



there who can tell me.* About July, back they come, and once

more the air is alive with their voices, asking for the tit-bit from the

paper bags which people bring down to the Lake to feed them with.

In winter they get especially tame, and will take bread from your

hand, but what they like best is to catch it in the air when it is

tossed up to them.


But to return to the East. I had hoped to see Flamingoes

on the banks of the canal, but evidently it was not the season for

them, for there were none to be seen. At Aden there was a great

variety of grey and brown gulls, some of them particularly large and

powerful. At every port we stopped at after that, the ship was

immediately surrounded by big brown Kites, so tame that you could

almost catch them as they swooped about after the bits and scraps

of food and refuse thrown from the galley, pouncing on the water

and sweeping up again with something very enjoyable in one claw

which was hurriedly eaten in mid-air. These, again, looked to me

exactly like the big brown Hawks which fish in pairs on the Lake

of Geneva, t


As we passed the Island of Dailak, I saw a very handsome

bird skimming over the waves, and from what I could judge, he

might have been about the size of a large duck, black on the back

and wings (which were very pointed) and pure white underneath, a

very short tail, and a large white beak. Could he have been one of

the divers ? Another bird which interested me very much was a

large fishing eagle, which kept flying to and from the bush at

Mombasa. He was very handsome with his gleaming white breast

and head and black wings and tail. “ Them billy-kites,” as the old

quarter-master called them, did not at all see the fun of it fishing

in their waters, for I saw two of them chasing it back to the

bush, but, nothing daunted, back it came again and even sat for a

moment on the rigging and defied them all.


We were anchored off Mombasa for ten days, so took the

opportunity of going for an hour’s run by train to Mazeras, through



* The Black-headed Gull resorts to marshes and meres for the breeding season,

in more northerly regions.—ED.


t They are Kites. These birds appear regularly on the Italian Lakes in the

springtime.—ED.



