566 Letters, Extracts, and Notes. 
XXVII.— Letters, Extracts, and Notes. 
We have received the following letters addressed “ To the 
Editors of e The Ibis 9 — 
Sirs, —I think the following observations may interest 
your readers. 
On Saturday, April 19th, at 3 p.xW., I noticed an extra¬ 
ordinarily large flight of birds coming towards my camp 
from the other side of the Red Sea. Their course was 
N.N.E .; my camp being situated on the shore of the Sea in 
lat. 29° 5' N., long. 30° 4' 15'' E. 
On the closer approach of the birds I found that they 
were Storks in a rather exhausted condition, in flocks of 
500 or 600 birds each. They were flying at a height of 
about 70-75 feet above the sea. Immediately on its arrival 
each company soared up high in the air in a kind of spiral 
column, presumably to spy out the land, and finding no 
water (the nearest well was some fourteen miles distant) 
continued their course in a N.E. direction across the desert. 
This went on until 5.30 p.m. 
I instructed some members of my staff to try to make a 
rough estimate of the numbers in the flocks, and on com¬ 
paring notes we found that each detachment seemed to 
consist of about 550 birds, and that no fewer than 47 de¬ 
tachments had arrived, and, after performing their spiral 
evolution, had continued their journey to the north-east. 
Can you give me any explanation as to where this 
enormous army of birds (about 30,000) came from and 
whither they were going ? 
Yours &c., 
Jebel Tanka, Robert H. Mackenzie 
by Abu Zenima, ( Mining Engineer). 
Eastern Desert, Sinai. 
[The birds were, no doubt, White Storks ( Ciconia alba) on 
their return journey northward to breed in Europe and Asia, 
but their congregation in such enormous numbers is, we 
believe, a fact that has not been previously recorded.— Edd.] 
