234 RAMBLES OF A NATURALIST. 
his pinions gently waving rather than flying, but all the 
while with head and beak pointing downwards intently 
scanning the limpid lake, whose glassy surface mirrors him 
again and again, His tail is on the move continually. It 
is the governor or rudder by which he steers. Every now 
and then, as he flies along, he shakes himself up with a kind of 
shiver. What this is for I do not know, but I describe him 
as I have seen him in that glorious country, which I shall 
always look back to as a naturalist’s paradise. Now his 
wings seem to go back with the force of the air, and he 
strikes the water aslant. Without an effort he rises again 
and passes on, but seeing a fish, or some floating matter 
which he had nearly overlooked, pauses, checks himself, 
turns downwards at right angles, and plunges into the water 
with a splash. 
%209. WHITE-WINGED TERN, Aydrochelidon leucoptera 
(Meisn). 
This is much scarcer than the Whiskered. We shot four 
at the Faioum where I suspect it breeds, and one on the 
Nile. The latter was on the Ist of May; it was with two 
others. The gizzard was full of flies. I also was shown 
three which had been killed at Damietta, and one which 
had been killed at Alexandria. This is the handsomest of 
all the Terns. Von Heuglin seems the only writer who has 
met with it. He says that this species and the Whiskered 
Tern are common all the year in Egypt and Nubia, and 
that in July he has often shot young birds which had 
evidently been hatched there (Syst. Ueb., p. 70). 
210, SCISSORBILL, Rhyncops flavirostris, Vieill. 
A sight of this strange bird is a gain which those have 
who visit Egypt late in the season, Ours was, I believe, 
