SIX MONTHS’ BIRD COLLECTING IN EGYPT. I4r 
and pinions which seem to be almost without motion. It 
is the rudderlike tail which enables it to turn with such 
consummate ease. 
During the winter they were shy, and many a cartridge 
was expended on them in vain; but as spring drew on and 
tourists went, they forgot their shyness and thought about 
making a nest. Indeed a few misguided birds take the 
trouble to nest twice or thrice, for the noise of their young 
being fed in the nest was heard in the Ezbekeeah Gardens* 
in January. Their nests, which by April are nearly as 
common as Crow’s nests, are untidy fabrics, the chief part 
being sticks and rags, put together anything but neatly. 
They are generally in trees, sometimes in cliffs or on houses. 
One of the most accessible I saw was on the tombs of the 
Caliphs. Mr. E. C. Taylor took several on the second 
Pyramid. I never saw any very young birds: there were 
two in Shepheard’s Hotel garden when we returned in May, 
which had left the nest and could fly. 
I must say, to give them credit for one cleanly habit, 
that I have seen them standing in the water and washing 
themselves. They are often on the sand banks, whether for 
fish or to digest their last meal, I do not know: I never 
saw one gorged, though I have seen their crops distended 
with offal. It is not very usual to see a great many to- 
gether. I remember noticing a big flock in a high wind at 
Minieh, and a still larger one of perhaps seventy on a sand- 
bank at Siout: what they were doing unless digesting I 
cannot guess; they were not near together as if they had 
found carrion, but were sitting apart at intervals, lazy and 
quiet. But the largest congregation of all was at a place just 
outside Cairo, not far from the citadel; here on the 18th of 
February, just after we had shot the bridge and Rhoda was 
opening into view, I beheld a surprising flock of Kites, and 
° The public gardens in Cairo. (See ante.) 
