Part 10

Probably no single work of art in all Egypt has been more widely copied than the picture of geese which is now in the Museum at Cairo. It came from the tomb of Ne fer ma[=a]t at Mêdûm, and is universally known as "the oldest picture in the world," for it is ascribed to the earliest dynasty, and approximately about 4400 B.C. To a naturalist it is peculiarly interesting, but the interest is linked with sadness, as the subject of the picture being entirely of bird-life, one would have thought that bird-life would be a subject of continued interest; but the reverse is very much the case, so much so, that though this very picture is known to thousands who have never been to Egypt, and many thousands more who have been to Egypt and gone to see this very picture, and bought photographs or copies of it, few or any have really interest enough in it even to learn or inquire what are the names of the geese depicted. In the very rough little sketch on p. 175 the two geese at the extreme right and left are Bean Geese, birds that one might expect the old-time artist to be familiar with, and the same is true of the two geese in the left-hand group, which are White-fronted Geese, as both are winter migrants to Egypt, remaining till March. Of the two remaining birds, from their markings the naturalist will have no doubt but that they are Red-breasted Geese; and there is a mystery, as they never come to Egypt, and being a northern bird, one is utterly at a loss to explain why the artist of that long-distant date should depict that special Goose. That he did see the bird, and with fidelity drew it, are facts, and one can only conclude that zoological collections are no new thing, but that men, nearly six thousand years ago, must have kept rare birds in captivity for the pleasure of their beauty, and that artists went to their zoological gardens or collections, and drew pictures of the inhabitants of far-distant climes for the walls of their temples or tombs. As a realistic study of bird-life this little picture is admirable, the set of the head and peculiar curve of the Feeding Geese is singularly true, whilst the whole is carried through in a broad decorative spirit. It is curious that in a country where the earliest art took subjects from Nature, there should now be such absolute apathy that in many cases the people have no separate names for the birds around them. Egypt has other geese that visit it, but none others native to it. The White-fronted Goose is said to be the most abundant of all, the Brent Goose and the Bean Goose, all three visiting the Nile and Delta in the winter months.

[Illustration: FIG. 11.]

PINTAIL-DUCK

Dafila acuta

Plumage of back and flanks grey; the large scapulars are long-pointed and edged with buff; brilliant metallic green bar on wing; head brown; neck and under-parts white; the tail long, and two centre feathers very narrow and longer than the rest; beak slate-grey; legs black; eyes brown. The female is a plain, mottled brown bird, tail pointed but not so long as the drake. Entire length, 23 inches.

At different times of the year different birds come in gigantic flocks. Thus at one time, owing to the vast migration of these Pintail-Ducks, it might well be said they were far and away the commonest; but a little later you hardly see one, and wherever you go it is the Shoveller Duck that is met with, whilst at another time it would be the Teal, or the Pochard. So that to settle the point exactly--What is the commonest duck of the country?--is not altogether an easy one, and I do not intend to speak dogmatically; but I have placed this duck first on the list, because not only do you meet with it in enormous numbers, but you also see it represented more frequently on the walls of temples and tombs. The well-known hieroglyph

[Illustration: PINTAIL, TEAL, AND SHOVELLER DUCK]

of a duck under a circle, which is translated as the Son of the Sun, was doubtless meant to represent this particular bird. Very often--not always--where the workmanship is of the finest and of a good period, the characteristics are exact, and the long pintail feathers are most plainly shown. Now, no duck that comes to this country has a long tail, other than the Pintail, therefore there can be no question that these old-time artists, for some reason best known to themselves, selected from all the various ducks they have, just this particular one to symbolize this royal conception. It is also shown on many wall-paintings in the tombs, flying with the tail spread, and the two long central feathers well marked. Going up the Nile sometimes you pass great high bare sandbanks which have on the other side of them long narrow strips of shallow pools; here, at certain times, is the place to see duck in their thousands--literally thousands. There they sit secure; the high bank screens them from the river-way with its great sailing-boats and modern steamers; they can see the tops of the spars and masts and the black smoke from the steamers' funnels, but neither boat nor steamer can see them. If you attempt an approach by land you can rarely surprise them, as they always have sentinels well posted up and down the reach of water, and a warning quack and all heads are up on a flash; and if the quack has had a certain intonation they are all up and away at once. Then it is, if you are shooting, that you may, if you keep quiet, get a shot as they return sweeping down and round the water, which they will not completely leave unless very frightened. I have looked on to pools of this sort which have been absolutely black with birds, and amongst the whole, nine-tenths would be Pintail. Later it might be, at that same pool, all would be Shovellers or Pochard. The Pintail is what is known as a surface-feeding duck, and is placed near the common Wild Duck, the Mallard of English waters. It is distinctly peculiar in form; the neck is long, and when alarmed the head is held high, and the whole neck looks very thin. These characters, as well as the long pintail, are well shown at Deir-el-Bahari and other temples, where the wall-painting is of a really good period, and from the frequency of its pictures one can only suppose that it was as common all those years ago as it is to-day. The Zoological Gardens at Cairo are visited nearly every winter by a few Pintails. They feed on grass and water-weeds, and all the teeming larva of flies and other insects that haunt shallow pools and puddles.

THE SHOVELLER DUCK

Spatula clypeata

Plumage of back brown, becoming black as it approaches the tail, which is also black with white edging to outer feathers; head and neck black with green metallic lustre; chest and lower parts white; the scapulars, long and pointed, are blue and black and white; wing has a metallic green bar, the small covert feathers are a very delicate blue-grey, and the flight feathers are dark brown; the breast and flanks are a brilliant chestnut; legs orange; beak black; eyes brown. The female is a dull brown colour with dark spots, and its bill often has looked to me even larger than the male's. Length, 20·5 inches.

The outstanding peculiarity of the Shoveller, male and female, is the large bill. Seen very near at hand it looks both large and clumsy, but it is a bill not made for ornament but for business, and carried low so that it just sweeps the water. As it swims along, a never-ending flow of insect-laden water enters it, and filtering through the plate-like serrations of the sides, leaves a rich deposit of food in the duck's mouth, and clearly the bigger the bill the more the water that can be filtered and dealt with, and the greater the consequent food-supply for the duck.

It is a really handsome bird in colour, the peculiar mass of light lilac blue-grey feathers of the wing contrasting vividly with the chestnut of the sides. Indeed, I do not know any duck that is superior to it in its vividly contrasting coloration. Although it is in form clumsy-looking, it is anything but clumsy or slow in getting up and on the wing, and I own to having been beaten often at pools similar to those described in reference to the Pintail, by the quickness and pace of its flight. The last visit I paid to the Cairo Zoological Gardens in March 1909, the ornamental waters there were crowded with duck, nearly all Shovellers. All had come in of their own accord, flew freely, and would, so Mr. Nicoll informed me, shortly all be up and away till another season came round. And in the most interesting report of the _Wild Birds of the Giza Gardens_ just published, figures are given. "A few Shovellers arrive, in some years, as early as August, and they become more and more numerous during the autumn and winter. Some leave here in March, but the majority do so in April." "Up to 1902 twenty was the largest number of Shovellers seen, at one time, on our lake. On the 18th of January 1903, 171 were counted; on the 6th of March 1905, 443. Since then it is estimated that over 500 Shovellers take up their winter quarters with us."

THE TEAL

Querquedula crecca

Arabic, _Sharshare_

Head and neck chestnut-brown; a patch of green encircles the eyes and cheeks, a light buff streak divides the green from the brown; neck, back, and flanks grey, composed of delicate alternate black and white wavy lines. Scapulars white with rich black on their outer webs; green metallic bar on wing; under-parts white; breast spotted with buffish-black; under-tail coverts a clear, brilliant yellow-buff; beak and legs black; eyes brown. The female looks smaller than the male, and is a sober-coloured brown bird, with darker, almost black, markings. Length, 15·5 inches.

As far as my own experience goes, I have never seen any really large flock of duck, of whatever kind, but there have been Teal among them. I do not care to say that I think this is the very commonest of all the duck tribe. It is certainly met with very frequently, but Captain Shelley holds that it is absolutely "the most abundant species of water-fowl throughout Egypt," and possibly he is right. It is the same smart little bird we have at home, and the male has, when showing off, a most attractive appearance, of which it is fully aware, as is shown by its jaunty carriage. Of all duck, this is the quickest off the mark; how it does it one can hardly see, but it leaves the water in one second, apparently at top speed, as if it had been going for some minutes. As with the Shoveller this duck comes in great numbers to the Cairo Zoological Gardens, and the ready intelligence it shows in remaining in full sight of men and flying close over their heads whilst in the Gardens, and the wary care it shows the moment it is outside the sanctuary, is most interesting. On wall-paintings I am told it is depicted, but I am not certain that I have ever seen its small form shown; in the matter of relative size of living and other objects, these old craftsmen were curiously capricious. A notable illustration of this is in the way they portrayed the wives of the heroic Rameses statues, where you will find the lady shown coming up only to the knee-joint of her gigantic lord and master. When they treated royal ladies in this way, it is useless to expect great accuracy in the matter of rendering the various relative sizes of humble water-fowl! Teal may be seen in nearly all the winter months amongst the Coot at the Sacred Lake at Karnak, and at many other places guarded by the Antiquities Department. Mr. Nicoll writes: "Several hundred Teal winter on the lake in the Gardens (Zoological). In some years a few of them arrive as early as the latter part of August, and they have been known to stay as late as the 8th of May."

THE WHITE PELICAN

Pelecanus Onocrotalus

General colour of plumage a rosy white; the larger flight-feathers of wing, black; beak grey; pouch, a bright yellow; eyes red. Entire length, 60 inches.

The Pelican has the honour of being, in Egypt, as far as sheer length of wing goes, the largest bird that flies; for the span of wings from tip to tip has been recorded as twelve feet. I believe the span of the Griffon Vulture is only about eight feet. Thirty years ago Pelicans were more often seen than they are to-day. This does not necessarily mean that they are less numerous, but only that, from some cause or another, they do not come within range of observation. I think the traffic on the river having so altered is the probable explanation. I can only recall one case of late, of seeing Pelican on a sandbank, and that was very early in the morning, practically daybreak. Years ago it was not an uncommon thing to see hundreds resting and recruiting on some lonely reach of the river. Captain Shelley says that in "April 1870, below Edfoo, we met with an immense flock of several

[Illustration: WHITE PELICANS]

thousands, passing low along the river on their way north, and although fired at several times they still kept streaming onwards in one continuous flock." Nowadays you will quite possibly see immense flocks going south in November, or north in the spring, but they will all be flying high and well out of gun-shot. The largest flock I ever saw was in December of 1907 when living at Deir-el-Bahari. I was working outside the hut there, when some noise made me look up, and I saw an amazing sight, hundreds and hundreds of these great birds flying round and round in circles high above the chalk cliff. This was about 2 P.M., and they remained thus slowly circling round and round till nearly 5 P.M., when gradually in small detachments they dwindled away, flying in a southerly direction. At times they came sufficiently low for me to see distinctly the yellow pouch hanging from the under-bill, but then again they would rise in great spiral curves to such a height that even with my pet glass they were almost invisible. With every new curve they showed some alteration of colour, so that sometimes they seemed a coral pink all over, and then again with some altered angle in relation to the sun they were a pure snow white. The two hours or more that they were over just this one spot where Queen Hatshepsut's temple stands, I worked hard at trying to sketch them till my eyes got blinded by staring up into the blue, and aching with trying to follow some individual bird sweeping right above my head. None but those who have tried it knows what an exhausting thing this is; every bird is changing its place continually, one after another comes sweeping by, turning, rising, falling, interlacing, till one has to absolutely cease looking and close one's weary eyes. I heard later the rumour that this great flock rested the night on the top of one of the hills a mile farther back, and at dawn were all away south.

Where, however, they can be still seen throughout the winter months and comparatively close at hand is on Lake Menzaleh. I saw them there in March, but by the 12th of April I could not see a single bird. The wonderful colour, a pale coral pink, that they show under the bright Egyptian sky, is something of a surprise to those who have only seen faded stuffed specimens in a museum, or the woebegone individuals in a menagerie. No one interested in birds should neglect the Cairo Zoological Gardens at Giza; there you will see all sorts of hot climate beasts and birds in the perfection of condition that they never show in our colder climes. And the colour that the Pelican displays under these perfect conditions is a revelation. To the most casual it appears pinkish, but to the artistic and observant the brilliance of the carmine-pink revealed in the shadows, and the shell-like delicacy of colour of the feathers seen in full sunlight, is simply charming. I regret, however, that no amount of artistic enthusiasm can ever find anything else to praise in its personal appearance, as it really is most desperately ugly. It is said, however, to be virtuous, and is to this day used as a symbol of beautiful self-sacrifice, and as an ecclesiastical emblem of the feeding of the Holy Catholic Church.[7]

[7] I regret, however, to have to write that this idea of self-sacrifice is really all bunkum. The tradition is, that when hard up, and the offspring were calling out for the food that was not, the mother bird would lacerate her own bosom and with her own life-blood feed and save her loved ones. Ages ago some poor, short-sighted man got this extraordinary notion from apparently watching the way the young are fed. The Pelican belongs to an order of birds that disgorges the food it has caught, in this case fish, into the upturned mouths of the young. Had this first short-sighted one only known that the Pelican's Hebrew name Kâath means "to vomit," this bird would hardly have been accredited with virtues it does not possess, or been painted, sculptured, and enshrined in thousands of holy places.

As a child I was much troubled with "the Pelican in the wilderness," but recently have been greatly relieved to hear, on the best authority, that though it says "wilderness" quite distinctly, it doesn't, you know, mean wilderness at all; the ordinary wilderness means a sandy, deserty sort of place, but this wilderness, we are told, means a wet sort of watery place. How nice it is to have these clear explanations from the best authorities of all those mysteries that darkened our early years! The Pelican lives entirely on fish, and is therefore never far from water. Considering its rather clumsy form it is fairly agile, and it has been noted that it can and does perch freely on boughs that bend and swing with its weight when at large, and that in captivity at the London Zoological Gardens one habitually used to perch on the thin corrugated wire fence that bisects their small enclosure, an almost acrobatic feat one would not have expected it capable of performing.

In books the statement has been made and often repeated that the Pelican breeds in Egypt, and my visit to Lake Menzaleh was very much taken just to settle whether it and Flamingoes did or did not breed there. I found they did not, and I should think it is very unlikely that they ever did, as though the lake is large the fact that fishermen's boats go all over it would hardly make it a safe place for these big birds ever to nest in.

THE CORMORANT

Phalacrocorax carbo

Arabic, _Agag_

Plumage dark bluish-black over head, breast, body; dull greenish-brown on wings, each feather margined with a darker tone; a pure white patch on cheeks, and another on the flanks; feathers on top of head elongated and edged with white; beak black at tip, yellow at base; part of the pouch which is without feathers, blue; legs black; eyes green. Length, 36 inches.

This is not a bird one would expect to see far away from the salt water, but there is anyhow one colony of them up the Nile at Gebel Abû Fêada--and any one going up the Nile must pass right by their breeding-place--and the birds in general seem to work rather south of that point than to the north. In March 1908 I saw them twice; once, near Manfalût, a string of six flew low over the water in single file so near that one could with the glass see the very hook at the end of their long bills. Perhaps no point on the river is quite so magnificent as these cliffs of Abû Fêada--the water rushes by their very feet, and their tops tower high in beautifully broken forms. The limestones of which they are formed seem to have weathered and perished more than in other parts, and honeycombed masses, and caves large and small, are visible everywhere on its nearly perpendicular sides. It is in these caves that birds have found a happy nesting-ground, and the extent of the deposit of guano in them shows that they have inhabited them for centuries.

The guide-books tell of these high cliffs--"sudden gusts of wind from the mountain often render great precaution necessary in sailing beneath them"; and on the last occasion of passing there was evidence of this, as a regular gale came on us just as we were passing and drove us along at a great pace. This wildness is similar to the wild windiness of the sea-coast, and the Cormorants may in this fact find some attraction to this inland home. But I should think it is far more likely still, that the founders of that colony were birds that had been reared in some of the other breeding-places that exist in the great Salt Lakes of Lower Egypt, and that by some chance taking to the river, which at Menzaleh would not be more than a mile or two away, found that the river fish were excellent, that life was pleasant, and the cliffs suitable for safely nesting in. "Stomach rules the world" is

[Illustration: CORMORANTS

On the Nile at Gebel Aboofayda.]