SIX MONTHS’ BIRD COLLECTING IN EGYPT. 105 
Green and a Common Sandpiper, which had been feeding 
unnoticed on the mud, fly up, but settle again at the end of 
the pond; while a flock of Temminck’s Stints, too accus- 
tomed to the noise of a village to be disturbed, only stop 
feeding for a minute, and then resume again, running about 
and feeding as if their very lives depended upon getting 
through a peck of marsh worms by sundown. 
The villages are generally about a mile apart, and .at 
every village there isa Palm grove. They are seldom far 
from the banks of the Nile, which at this time of the year 
is low, uncovering many a tempting sandbank, where flocks 
of Herons preen themselves, and the Egret—the loveliest 
of all known birds—performs its solitary ballet dance. A 
word must be given to the sandbanks. Here the Ziczac 
Plover, that most characteristic of Egyptian birds, flies 
at the intruder, and with a winnowing motion of its armed 
wings endeavours to intimidate him, and reiterating its 
harsh cry, drives the crocodile, which had come out to bask, 
to his lair at the bottom of the river. Here too the gay 
“Pluvian” flies low over the surface of the water, and here 
six Garganeys, the last left of all the Duck tribe which 
swarmed a few weeks ago, disport themselves in a back- 
water such as one sees in many a tidal harbour. 
The most careful steering will not prevent Diabeyhas 
from running on to sandbanks, and sticking hard and fast 
there. When this happens there is nothing for it but to 
tug and strain and heave and bellow until they are got off 
again, and this is sometimes a work of many hours, even 
occasionally of days. Meanwhile the mortified passenger 
sees the cangia and the lighter merkeb pass him by with 
impunity. But this delay is an opportunity for striking 
inland to where the desert and cultivation meet, a limit 
defined for miles and miles, which the shifting sands may 
modify but can never obliterate. 
The last field is soon reached, and there is no animal 
