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others displayed every intermediate gradation of speckled or 
mottled dress; even their legs and feet agreed in the general 
mix-up of colours. Clearly to a tyro these reef-herons presented 
problems beyond any hope of settlement within brief days or 
weeks. These, therefore, I passed over to await the time when 
some naturalist on the spot shall have leisure to work out 
their life-history and plumage-changes throughout the year. 
Tropic-Bird ( Phaeton ethereus). —Hardly had we entered 
Ethiopian waters than, in mid-Gulf of Suez, on January ioth, 
1913, a Tropic-bird in exhausted condition boarded our s.s. 
Gaika. To me this species had always been associated solely 
Tropic-Bird, Gulf of Suez— January ioth, 1913. 
with the seas of the Southern Hemisphere, and its presence in 
such latitudes as this seemed amazing—almost scandalous? 
Butler at that date had never received a specimen. But the 
romance was short-lived. Later on, the Tropic-bird was dis¬ 
covered breeding on rocky islets in the southern Red Sea— 
particularly on Dahlak Island, near Perim. So the glory of my 
discovery quickly vanished. 
Inland from Port Sudan we have thrice spent several days 
examining the scrubby bush-jungle of the “ Maritime Plain.” 
In its main features, however, the bird-life here resembled that 
at Sinkat, etc., already described, and a list of the local species 
would be superfluous. Some, however, had not been previously 
recorded, such as, e.g., Sylvia mystacea , A. nana , the blackstart, 
blue-throat, and blue mountain-thrush ( Monticola cyaneus ); 
