THE ZOOLOGIST 



No. 232.— April, 1896. 



BIRD LIFE IN EASTERN ALGERIA. 

 By 0. V. Aplin, F.L.S. 



When living for a few weeks, in May and June, 1895, in the 

 western part of Tunis, a little to the south of the Khomair 

 country, on the borders of Algeria, I occasionally crossed the 

 frontier of the latter country ; and I propose to give in this 

 paper some account of the birds I used to meet with there. 

 That in casual and infrequent visits of this kind, of merely a few 

 hours' duration each, I should only meet with the most usual 

 and ordinary birds — and should overlook some of these even — 

 goes without saying. And yet many of the species which I did 

 encounter are so interesting to the members of that growing 

 class of British field-ornithologists (" hedgerow naturalists " an 

 old friend calls them) to which I try to belong, that I feel hardly 

 any apology is needed for laying these notes before the readers 

 of * The Zoologist.' 



The valley of the Medjerdah (the Roman Bagrada) at the 

 point, and above where, the river crosses the frontier, has 

 narrowed very considerably in the last mile or two of its upward 

 course. The traveller proceeding in that direction has left the 

 broad plain-like valley, with its wide, rich corn-lands, and its 

 woods of wild olive, intersected by many a tributary stream or 

 little river. The hills have closed in rapidly, and it is only here 

 and there that one finds a tiny patch of corn at the foot of the 

 hills, or on some little terrace higher up, both probably edged 

 and encroached upon, more or less, by the sarib thorn, or other 



ZOOLOGIST, THIED SERIES, VOL. XX. APRIL, 1806. L 



