144 



Captain Shelley, who has observed the Roller in Egypt, writes that he " first met with a 

 pair near Edfoo, Upper Egypt, on the 26th April, 1870. On the 29th saw four specimens. 

 They kept to a scattered clump of acacia trees, and would not be driven to the palm trees, 

 although there was a large wood of them some few hundred yards distant ; but occasionally they 

 lighted upon the open ground where the corn had been carried. They were very shy ; but I 

 obtained three by having them driven over my head while I hid behind a bush. They probably 

 do not arrive in Egypt on their way down the Nile before the 20th April. I met with them 

 invariably in pairs ; but they do not, I believe, breed in Egypt. Their food consists of beetles." 

 Dr. Th. von Heuglin (Orn. N.-O. Afr. p. 172) writes : — 



" It is a migrant in N. E. Africa and Arabia. In Egypt it arrives from the south singly or 

 in small flocks late in April, and remains a short time. It is then found in fields, meadows, and 

 olive-gardens." 



Mr. C. W. Wyatt, who has lately returned from a journey in the peninsula of Sinai, has 

 sent us the accompanying observations : — 



" I met with the Roller at Ahabar, at the head of the gulf of the same name, in the palm 

 groves, at the beginning of April. Whether they stay there to breed or were only pairing I do 

 not know. A few days later I saw a single bird on the Humeihgumah plain, on the highlands 

 of Edom, between Ahabah and Petrsea, sitting, for want of something better, on one of the little 

 desert plants peculiar to those regions. It was evidently on its passage." 



" The Blue Roller," writes Dr. Brehm, " appears in Egypt in the end of July, associated in 

 small flocks. It is not rare in August near Alexandria, and is hunted and eaten by the Italian 

 inhabitants of the town. I found it at Wadi Haifa in the November of 1847, in 1848 on the 

 6th of October, and on the 28th of September in 1851, in the act of moulting. I found it, 

 moreover, in 1848, on the 28th of January, at Halfai, on the lower part of the Blue Nile, and in 

 1850 on the upper part of the same above Chartum; in 1851, on the 26th of August, near El 

 Mucheiref (vigorously moulting); on the 14th of September in the province of Dongola; on the 

 19th September in Dar el Mahass. We find in Egypt the Rollers distributed everywhere during 

 the whole winter, and isolated in the Durrah-fields, where they sit on the cut stems of the Durrah, 

 which are left several feet high, and, like the Shrikes, which are also there abundant, watching 

 for insects." 



Concerning the Roller in Palestine, Dr. Tristram writes (Ibis, 1866, p. 81) as follows: — 

 " The Bee-eater (Merops apiaster) and the Roller (Coracias garrula) reappeared simulta- 

 neously, but, unlike the Hoopoe, in large flocks, which very gradually dispersed in the case of 

 the Roller, while the Bee-eaters remain more or less gregarious throughout the summer. The 

 first time we obtained specimens of either was on the fourth of April, in the plain of Bethshean, 

 to the east of Mount Tabor. On the 12th of April I reached Ain Sultan (Jericho) alone, and 

 remained there in solitude for several days, during which I had many opportunities of observing 

 the grotesque habits of the Roller. For several successive evenings great flocks of Rollers 

 mustered shortly before sunset on some dom trees near the fountain, with all the noise, but 

 without the decorum, of Rooks. After a volley of discordant screams, from the sound of which 

 it derives its Arabic trivial name of ' schurkrak ' (j})//"), a few birds would start from their 

 perch, and commence a series of somersaults overhead, somewhat after the fashion of Tumbler 



