Bird Specimen Collections 
During the PMS, specimens of several sorts have heen collected. 
Primary emphasis has been placed on good representation of skins of 
migrants and when possible resident birds for systematic studies. 
The main purpose in collecting the migrants has been to identify the 
subspecies of birds passing through northeast Africa, and thereby 
attempt to deduce the breeding or wintering area of the birds. In 
this way it may be possible to predict foci of virus activity by 
monitoring migrants. It has been necessary to collect large numbers 
of specimens throughout the migratory season in order to determine 
whether different subspecies pass at different times. Some of the 
subspecies are well marked and relatively discrete while others vary 
gradually in west to east dines of decreasing color, and north to 
south dines of decreasing size. For a large proportion of the 
species migrating through Egypt and Cyprus, birds from a broad range 
of the Palearctic represented by several subspecies are involved. 
The general provenance of the birds found in the eastern 
Mediterranean on passage is given on the distribution maps in 
Appendix I (pages 1-13T)• 
Sufficient skins have now been collected in Egypt to carry out 
systematic studies on the migrants. These include 20^5 skins 
collected during the PMS, plus specimens collected by earlier NAMRU-3 
studies in the area and now deposited in the Chicago Natural History 
Museum (l879 specimens), and Smithsonian Institution (IT^ specimens). 
30 
