SIX MONTHS’ BIRD COLLECTING IN EGYPT. 215 
evening, and we did not discern them until a shot, fired at 
a passing bird, put them up. Then the whole air was 
peopled. Many were the conjectures which might have 
been heard on our Diabeyha as to what they were, and we 
finally resolved that they must be Numidian Cranes; but 
this great flock was as nothing to what we saw on the 25th 
of March. On that day I was just thinking of getting out 
of bed—it was about 6 a.m., for I always rose early—when 
the waiter tapped at my door and pronounced the magic 
word wzz, which literally means a Goose, but which was 
employed by that functionary to designate any large bird 
which he thought we should like. I whipped on my clothes 
with something less than the speed of “greased lightning,” 
and on coming up on to the deck beheld an extraordinary 
spectacle. On the sandbanks before me, motionless and 
still asleep, were three huge regiments of Storks, looking 
for all the world like great herds of sheep pasturing on the 
wolds of Yorkshire. I judged that in the largest of those 
“cohorts” there might be a thousand birds, but the others 
were not much less. I shot one with my rifle, and im- 
mediately the air was filled with them, each with his legs 
sticking out behind him, and a red beak appearing from 
between his great wings. After circling, one above another, 
in concentric rings (of which the highest seemed the small- 
est) for half an hour, during which the sky seemed alive 
with them, they took themselves off in a northerly direction 
to seek some safer quarters. 
Besides these vast hordes, which I must say were even a 
greater phenomenon than the living islands of Ducks on 
lake Menzaleh, I now and then came upon much smaller 
flocks halting in the desert; and very hungry and unsociable 
they appeared to be, each a hundred yards or so from his 
neighbour, and wrapped up in contemplation of the dreary 
scene around him, 
