SIX MONTHS’ BIRD COLLECTING IN EGYPT. 219 
or the Tombs of the Kings. It was standing near some 
Buff-backs. The next day we found it again in exactly the 
same place, but without the Buff-backs. When frightened 
by being shot at, it mounted very high, flying in circles 
with its neck extended. 
At Damietta I was offered a pair which had been shot 
the previous spring. I took the larger and brighter one of 
the two, which I presume was the male. It isa fine bird, 
but not so good as an Alexandrian one of Mr. Allan’s 
which I lately saw on sale at Mr. Gerrard’s, and which may 
be the specimen referred to in the “Ibis” for 1863, p. 34. 
I saw another Alexandrian example at Mr. Mayers’. 
Some remarks will be found about the Sacred Ibis (which 
we never met with) in chapter VI. 
182. FLAMINGO, Phenicopterus antiquorum, Tem. } 
“ Bachirroch,” or “ Basharoos.” 
High praise has been lavished on the Flamingo, and the 
untravelled Englishman has always been taught that this is 
“the bird of all birds,” and that nothing in nature is so 
surpassingly beautiful; while all writers have vied with one 
another in finding epithets to describe the spectacle of the 
pink tints of a band of them rising into the air “an animated 
rosy cloud.” Having at last realised the ardent wish to 
see them, which I have ever had from childhood, I am bold 
to say that on the whole they are not overrated—their 
vaunted splendour is not a myth but a real thing, and 
nothing will ever dispel from my memory the feelings with 
which I first saw Flamingos. It needs not the halo of 
Afric’s sun to illumine a splendour to which the gilded birds 
of the tropics must yield the palm. Marshalled, they stand 
in one long glittering line; some of them apparently with 
no head; others with but one leg; others with raised wing 
