(Gey) 
NOTES ON THE BIRDS OF SARDIS, ASIA MINOR. 
By Frora Russe. 
My handbook was the ‘Manual of Palearctic Birds,’ by 
H. E. Dresser (1902), and I have followed his nomenclature. We 
left Smyrna on March 15th, 1911, by the railway that joins the 
Konia line at Afion Karahissar. Smyrna harbour was full of 
Black-headed Gulls (Larus ridibundus), and where the line skirts 
the bay, north of the town, there were large flocks of Herring 
Gulls (L. cacchinans) as well. It was a fine spring day, the 
warmth most pleasant. The early fruit-trees were just blos- 
soming, and anemones coming out, but the country showed 
traces of the severest winter for years. Olive-trees, the wild 
oleander, and myrtle were brown and withered by snow and 
cold winds. 
At Menemen station the air was full of small Kestrels flying 
like Swifts. Later I saw these again at Pergamon and identified 
them as Falco cenchris. At Kassaba a flock of extremely tame 
doves (Turtur decaocto) were on the station shed. They 
were numerous on the roofs of the mosques at Magnesia and 
Pergamon. 
Just before reaching Sart station, which is in the broad valley 
of the Hermus, we had the welcome sight of three Storks 
(Ciconia alba) following a man ploughing. Further on were 
a pair “inspecting an old nest. I gathered that none had been 
observed until that day, and that March 15th is an early date 
for their arrival. Mr. Danford (see ‘ Ibis,’ 1878) gives March 
29th for the arrival of Storks in the Sihoun valley. Before we 
left on April 15th nests were occupied on all the ruins of Roman 
and Byzantine Sardis, as well as on the flat roofs of modern 
villages. 
The site of Sardis, the capital of Croesus’ kingdom of Lydia, 
was a mile and a half south of Sart station, up the valley of the 
Pactolus. 
Zool, 4th ser. vol. XVI., March, 1912. I 
