SIX MONTHS’ BIRD COLLECTING IN EGYPT. 241 
at the back of the head, which you can feel projecting under 
the skin. 
It was great sport shooting them in the evening, which 
may be easily done as they come flying down the Bar-El- 
Wady canal, which unites the Bar-Joseph to the lake. 
Here one of us would hide up behind the stunted bushes, 
and as they were very regular we knew exactly what time 
to look out for them. It is necessary to see them a long 
way off, as they are rather shy withal, and then to keep 
well hidden; but sometimes the specks which were taken 
for Cormorants turned out to be only Buff-backs, though 
generally they flew in a more straggling flock. Now and 
then one comes stealing low over the water, or a pair pass 
out of shot. They are going to a bed of tamarisks a mile 
out in the lake, where they intend nesting with the Buff- 
backed Herons. We saw a few sitting upon nests, but they 
had evidently not begun to lay. Indeed they may only 
have been using empty nests as a convenient perching 
place. They took up a position on higher boughs than the 
Buff-backs—often seven or eight on the top of the same 
tamarisk. All the nests there seemed to me to be the same, 
and to be built of the same materials, so that I judge they 
were all Buff-backs’ or Herons’ nests of some kind. I saw 
a Buff-back settle upon one, on which.a moment before 
there had been a Cormorant. They are such good divers, 
that of the first six shot (by my friend) only one was 
bagged. They are very easy to skin when not fat. 
Hartmann found the P. africanus at Gebel-Tair, (J. F. O., 
1863, p. 300) and either this species or the Lesser Cormorant 
was formerly common at Damietta, and known by the 
name of “Fessek,” as I am informed by M. Filliponi, who 
however has not seen one this seven years. 
