82 EGYPTIAN BIRDS 
Sparrow or two looking after some of the drop- 
pings from the nose-bags. 
In winter they get spread about and are 
not very noticeable, but when the corn ripens 
then they all seem to multiply in extraordinary 
fashion. Clouds of them rise up and fly round, 
startled by the loud ery or stone slung by the 
ragged urchin of a bird scarer. I remember well 
Leighton’s picture of a bird scarer, showing an 
athletic young fellow, stripped to the waist, poised 
on one foot, body bent back, hurling the stone as 
David did at Goliath. But in the years I have 
known Egypt I have never seen in real life any- 
thing approaching that picture, for it is generally a 
blear-eyed small boy, half-clothed and hideously 
dirty, who, standing on the pathway, yells dis- 
cordantly and purposely just as you pass him, 
sometimes accompanying the cry with a mild little 
jerky underhand throw of some clot of hardened 
soil which possibly breaks in mid-air before reach- 
ing the birds. So no lives are lost, and the birds 
just fly away contemptuously to another part of 
the field. In Nubia it is different, and there girls 
as well as boys do really sling stones, and with some 
effect. I do not think there is any peculiarity 
of the life-history of the Sparrow in Egypt that is 
