384 The Wilson Bulletin — No. 92 



cated birds were strutting up and down the river front at 

 Wadi Haifa, when we made our first landing there. 



The Grey-headed Yellow Wagtail {Biidytes flava) was 

 identified in but two localities, which were along the road 

 between Baliana and Abydos and on the plain of Thebes in 

 the neighborhood of the Colossi of Memnon. All about these 

 giant statues the land was green with crops of grain, in 

 which the field birds made their home. There, under the 

 shadow of these vast monuments three thousand generations 

 of birds have built their nests and reared their broods, and 

 a hundred generations of men have plowed, planted, and har- 

 vested the surrounding acres, while overhead circled untold 

 numbers of Swallows, Swifts and Martins. Dynasties waxed 

 strong, then perished ; nearly all the known history of the 

 world has been made, the poetry, art, inventions have been 

 created, since those days wherein Amenophis III watched the 

 erection of his famous Colossi. When for him there was the 

 same smile on the face of nature, the same lilt in the song of 

 the Crested Lark, the same flash of colors in the flight of the 

 Grey-headed Yellow Wagtail that greet us today in the Val- 

 ley of the Nile. 



It is to be hoped that the wayside stranger, dependent on 

 binoculars for identifications, will not be expected to speak 

 confidently as to which species of ]\Iartins and Swifts were 

 seen almost daily and frequently in large numbers along the 

 Nile. In the matter of Swallows the task is easier : The 

 Swallow {Hirundo rustica) — or its allied form that occurs 

 in Egypt — was seen but a few times, its creamy underparts 

 easily distinguishing it from the Egyptian Swallow {Hirundo 

 savignii), whose underparts are reddish-brown. The latter 

 was a very abundant species and was seen daily in Eg}^pt, 

 but not once in Nubia. In its choice of nest-site it resembles 

 our Barn Swallow, and lacking the barn it builds the nest 

 inside the mud hut of a native. The Pale Crag-Swallow 

 (Cotyle obsoleta), I believe, was identified in several localities 

 and was the only species found in the Valley of the Tombs 

 of Kings and Queens. As we came out from the tombs of 



