206 RAMBLES OF A NATURALIST. 
Crane came to Lower Egypt in autumn; but the statement 
made to him by some Egyptians that it came there from 
the south was wrong. 
169. HERON, Ardea cinerea, Linn.; “ Balachoun.” 
The grey English Heron is a very common bird in Egypt 
and resident, but its numbers are probably diminished in 
the summer. They are very fond of standing in parties of 
a dozen at the extremity of a sandbank when they are not 
fishing, where they can command a good view round. 
Upon these sands of Egypt they lock almost white in the 
‘hot glare of the eastern sun. I observed some about the 
lofty ledges of Gebel-Abou-Foeder, where the mountains 
rise in a precipice on the east side. They are of stupendous 
height, and this is considered the most dangerous place on 
the Nile. There were numbers more on the cliffs beneath 
the Coptic convent of Gebel-Tair (ie. the mountain of a 
bird). I dare say they breed there. These cliffs are about 
two hundred feet high. Those at Abou-Foeder are higher 
still. 
We shot several specimens on the Nile, but none so fine 
as a very old bird which I shot at the Faioum. I have 
often noticed some rusty yellow on the carpal joint, but in 
this one there was also a considerable amount of it’ on the 
lower portion of the fore-neck. Two, got about the end of 
April, were still in immature plumage. Fish is their general 
food: one fellow had eleven good-sized ones in his throat. 
It is possible that they themselves are occasionally made 
prey of by the crocodiles, as one was seen to snap at a 
Heron on the edge of a sandbank. Vierthaler, in his Orni- 
thological Diary on the Blue Nile, says that he and Brehm 
observed unmistakable traces of a quarrel between a Croco- 
dile and a Crane, in which the former was victorious. 
