Part 8

Their food is very varied. In captivity they seem as if they could, and would, eat anything, and I remember once seeing one trying to swallow a kid glove that had accidentally been dropped into its enclosure; possibly it thought it was some sort of dried frog! Insects, snails, frogs, and anything it can get from the water, as well as seeds and grasses, are its stock articles of diet.

M. Maspero told me that in his opinion there was a notable diminution of their number and of the time they spend in Egypt every winter--a view I also take most decidedly with my own recollections of twenty-five years ago, when I saw them so frequently that then they were one of the commonest sights on the Nile, whilst in the winters of 1907-1908 I was only once able to make drawings of them on a sandbank near Minieh, and saw but two or three flocks during the whole time flying high in air. This is entirely owing to the great increase of large steamers which, passing up and down, disturb the quiet of the water. If one is fortunate enough to hear them calling one to another as they fly above your head, one will ever afterwards be able to identify them, even though they be mere specks in high heaven, as the sound is peculiarly trumpet-like and sonorous. It carries an enormous distance, and attention may perhaps be drawn to their coming before the faintest sign of them can otherwise be seen.

Most would think, from a general glance at the Crane, that it was a Heron of some sort, but scientists tell us that it is a long way removed from them, and indeed some place it nearer the Bustards. There are many species of Cranes, and they are to be found practically the world over, for not only in Africa and Europe, but Asia, and Australia, and America all have their special Cranes.

In many of the wall-paintings throughout Egypt Cranes are shown, and in none are they in more exact truth than in the temple at Deir-el-Bahari. There they are shown walking in stately fashion between slaves bearing precious burdens; whilst some carry garden produce, rich fruits, and flowers, others are laden with ready trussed fowls and ducks, and amidst them all the graceful bird walks on. One wonders it does not fly away, for these good things do but foreshadow its own end; but if you look closely you will see its bill is tied down close to its neck, for these old-time people knew well the habits of the beasts and birds, and knew that if it could not stretch out head and neck it could not fly. All Cranes, and indeed many other birds, seem unable to start flight without a certain momentum given by a run forward with wings outspread and stretched-out neck. With head tied down it could get no balance, and would flap and flop, and then fall to the ground. It is in little details such as this that the more you know the more you respect the knowledge of these old artists, and admit the truth and merit of their unrivalled art.

[Illustration: FIG. 8.]

THE SPOONBILL

Platalea leucorodea

Plumage white all over, tinged with buff on the lower part of the neck; head crested; beak flattened from above downward, and terminating in a broad spoon-shaped expansion; eye red.

When seen flying the Spoonbill can be readily distinguished from the only other white Egyptian bird, _i.e._ the Egret, because the former flies with its neck extended, whilst the latter, being of the Heron tribe, flies with its neck drawn back close to the body.

I have seen pictures in some of the Gurnah tombs which, though crudely drawn, were undoubtedly meant for the Spoonbill. The old-time artist was apparently so struck with the flat, spoon-shaped beak that he deemed it a worthy subject for the exercise of his art. But though faithfully drawn in so far as its form is concerned, it is wrongly depicted in its relation to the head, since the head is shown in profile, while the beak is drawn as though it were seen from above! In no picture that I can recall by these ancient draughtsmen is any bird ever shown in the very slightest degree foreshortened.

[Illustration: SPOONBILLS

On a mud-bank.]

The use of this very remarkable beak is apparent when the bird is seen feeding; it is held low down on the surface of the water, and pushed along, like a shrimper's net, in front of the bird, so as to collect the minute organisms which constitute its food. I have also seen this beak driven deep down, and brought to the surface bearing long strings of grass and other water weeds. In February 1909, when walking along the front at Luxor,--with its hotels and shops, crowds of people and noisy donkey-boys,--I was startled by quite a big flock of Spoonbills that were beaten down low by a strong wind. They passed so close over my head that I saw their big flat beaks and long extended necks quite plainly: as they got farther away their general likeness to Swans in flight was most striking.

Like all birds showing any marked peculiarity in the shape or size of the beak, the Spoonbill wears a somewhat melancholy air, and my readers will doubtless recall this appearance in the case of Herons and Storks, Pelicans and Cormorants.

Time was when the Spoonbill was once common in Great Britain; this is now, unhappily, no longer the case, but no farther away than Holland it still lives and breeds.

THE STORKS

THE WHITE STORK

Ciconia alba

The White Stork is white all over, save for all the true wing feathers, which are black. Beak and bare skin round eye, legs and feet, bright red; eyes brown. Total length, 44 inches.

THE BLACK STORK

Ciconia nigra

The Black Stork is a bronzy black with purple and green reflections all over head, neck, back, and wings. The lower parts white, and beak and bare skin, legs and feet, bright red; eyes brown. Total length, 42 inches.

Facing page 1 is shown a White Stork flying, and the fact that all Storks, in distinction to Herons, fly with their heads and their legs stretched out to their fullest extent, has been already pointed out. This Stork is nearly always seen in large flocks, and there must be ten to one of the white to the black species. The white bird is eminently a gregarious bird, sociable with its fellows, and this sociability extends also to mankind; and most have seen the old wheels stuck on poles and rough platforms

[Illustration: Black Stork]

built on the top of buildings and barns in Holland or Germany to encourage the bird to come and nest. The Stork and the Swallow know their seasons, and people love to have these messengers of the coming summer make their home with them; and in many places there are traditions of the same site having been used by them for nesting in for hundreds of years. Of all this side of their life, however, those seen in Egypt show nothing, as nearly all that come are simply migrating still farther south. A very few do remain throughout the winter in one or two exceptionally favoured feeding-grounds; Lake Menzaleh, for instance, with its great area of shallow water teeming with fish and aquatic insect life, is a favourite haunt. The profusion of life in every pool and puddle throughout Egypt is really astonishing. I have seen isolated spaces hardly exceeding a couple of square yards absolutely teeming and heaving with innumerable beetles and larvæ of flies and insects. I can also recall one little pool in the centre of one of the many small nameless islands in Lake Menzaleh: when I approached it, from its glittering whiteness I took it to be one of those salt-covered basins that are everywhere, but when I looked close the whole floor of what had been a small pool was one solid mass of dead fry, none longer than an inch and a half. The water had been all over the island, but when I was there in April it had gone down, and this mass of imprisoned little fish had died as the water gradually dried up. How long they may have been dead I do not know, but the level mass of them was so untouched that it was clear no gull or heron or stork had been there, and yet the district was full of these birds; but I presume living food being in such profusion round them, they cared not to trouble about dead. The pool looked like a large basin of the most wonderfully silvery whitebait.

Up the Nile when flocks of Storks are seen they are always either heading due north in spring, or due south in autumn. Every now and again they indulge, however, sometimes for hours together, in curious aerial exercises high up in mid-air over one spot--why this is I do not know. This, as is the case with so many of birds' habits, is all that can be done--note the fact. Conclusions drawn from these facts are vain, as too often man reads into these birds' actions the reasons that would occur in his life; and the life of a bird is not as that of a man, and the sooner man throws over all such ideas that he can tell anything of the causes of birds' actions by reading himself into their lives, the sooner he may get at the real truth of the matter. I say this because I have been asked so often the question, Why do the Storks behave in this curious way? I don't know, and at present I don't think any man knows; for if they are on a journey the only stop you would think they would make would be for rest or food, yet for hours, sometimes almost for the best part of a day, they do stop over one spot, and you will see these vast flocks high up, so that they look like mere specks, going round and round, sometimes higher, sometimes lower, but never going far from some unseen centre of attraction till the spirit moves them; and swinging out of the great circle, they one by one take their places in the wake of some chosen leader to the land to which they would go.

The White Stork makes a curious clattering noise with its bill. Its food is mainly derived from the water; and frogs, a plague of which is always over Egypt, are favourite morsels.

If sailing down the river you chance on a large flock resting on some sandbank, you will see a picture which would be exceedingly difficult to surpass in beauty and interest. The white of the great masses of birds comes in fine contrast with the reds of their legs and the golden yellow of the sand, and if on your nearer approach they all simultaneously rise together into mid-air you will be hardly likely to forget the scene for a whole lifetime.

* * * * *

The Black Stork is not so interesting as the above, but it is a remarkably handsome bird in itself. All its peculiarities are just the opposite of the White Stork. It is not gregarious, but generally rather a solitary bird; it does not love its own species, and it certainly does not court the proximity of man. On the scale that our drawing has had to be reduced to, to suit these pages, it comes very small, but not too small to show the general disposition of the colours of its plumage. We came very early in the morning on this group standing at the end of a long sand-bar, just ten miles south of Sohag, and they never got up as the boat sailed comparatively close by them. The group was a very mixed one, as in addition to the four Black Storks there were two Spoonbills and a Heron; and I find another note that once I saw three Black Storks, one White Stork, and several Herons all in a bunch together, this also in the grey of an early March morning. These two cases of a contradiction of what we are generally told is the ordinary habit of shunning their own species is only another of the endless cases that I have met with of the variation of the individual in absolutely everything. All that can be done is to give what is believed to be the average customary habit, but ever be prepared for individuals contradicting the rule. To dogmatise as to what a child or a bird will do is always March madness. The Black Stork is like his white cousin, of great use in keeping down the Egyptian plague of frogs.

THE SHOEBILL OR WHALE-HEADED STORK

Balaeniceps rex

Arabic name, _Abu-markub_, or Father of a Slipper

The whole plumage is a faded blue-grey running into darker tones on the wing. The primaries and tail being nearly black, eyes light yellow, legs dark brownish-black. Bill, huge, boat-shaped.

This bird I have included, though hardly a true Egyptian bird, its home being in the Soudan and south to Uganda, where Sir H. Johnston commonly saw it. It is the greatest show-bird the Cairo Zoological Gardens possesses, and by the ordinary person can be alone seen in Egypt. It is so exceedingly quaint and grotesque, that even when desiring to give an accurate representation of it, one is conscious that one's drawing seems to look rather like a caricature. When it stands still there is something suggestive of a crabbed, disagreeable old person; and when it walks, the slow pedantic gait with the leg shot forward, with distended toes pointing outwards, inevitably suggests the drum-major or the dancing-master. So many people

[Illustration: SHOEBILL STORK]

visiting the Cairo Gardens remember only this quaint bird, that it has become one of the most popular birds of the country, and is better known than very many of the true native Egyptian birds.

Captain Stanley S. Flower says "he saw perhaps as many as forty in one day" during a trip on the White Nile. "They were to be seen usually singly, sometimes two or three within a score of yards of each other, standing about on the edges of the marsh, always in the same attitude. In the motionless way in which they stand, their solitariness, and their flight, they are more like a Heron than a Stork. In fact, at a distance, unless you can see the bill, it is impossible to tell them when on the wing from the Goliath Heron."

Mr. A. L. Butler says of it in its native wilds: "They seem of a very sluggish nature, and I seldom observed them on the wing unless put up by our steamer." And as to its food, he writes: "I have never known it attempt to eat shell-fish; the bird is a fisher pure and simple, but doubtless, like a Heron, will eat any small mammal or young water-bird that comes within reach." Heron-like, Balaeniceps, instead of searching for its prey, waits patiently for it to come to it. It is generally to be seen standing motionless on newly-burnt swampy ground, or short grass flooded with an inch or two of water, inside the fringe of papyrus, or "um suf" sudd which separates the channel of the Bahr-el-Ghazal from the plains. I never saw the bird actually wading in water. Its food consists principally of _Polypterus senegalus_, which wanders a great deal into flooded grass-land. Sometimes the bird will perch on the top of a tree, but trees are scarce in its haunts. Its flight is heavy, but powerful; the neck is drawn back like a Heron's. "It seems to be rather a quarrelsome bird; on its first arrival at Khartoum, it seized a fox terrier which approached it so sharply that the dog fairly yelled." Some of its habits are as peculiar as its appearance, for, later on, Mr. Butler tells us, "They have a curious trick of repeatedly bringing up their food before finally swallowing it. This often results in the disgorged fishes being snatched up by Kites"; and every visitor to the Giza Gardens must have noticed its curious habit of rattling its bill as it alternately lifts and lowers its head as a sort of welcome to its keeper. When it stands thus with its head lowered, its bill clattering, and its neck slightly swollen and held straight as a stick, it is about the most curious-looking bird possible. At the date of writing, I believe these three specimens at Giza are the only ones in any zoological gardens in the world, and the authorities are naturally very proud of them; but we do hope that some day we shall have some in our own Zoological Gardens in London, as they are birds that can stand captivity well.

THE COMMON HERON

Ardea cinerea

The top of head, neck, and under-parts white; a stripe above the eye, back of head, and long, thin crest-feathers; spots on breast, and larger wing-feathers black; flanks a very light grey; rest of plumage a delicate slaty-grey shading on the wings to a darker hue; beak yellowish-green; legs greenish-black; eyes yellow. Entire length, 38 inches.

This is the common Heron of England, and is evenly distributed over the country. It needs water, and from that cause is more often seen in Lower than Upper Egypt. It seems to be a visitor and not a resident. Mr. M. J. Nicoll tells me that from August to April it is steadily seen either in, or flying over, the Zoological Gardens at Cairo, and if it were a resident bird it would be one of the first to make the Gardens a breeding-place, as the thick trees and quiet pools of water are all to its liking; but I have not heard that it ever occurs there during the summer months. The group I sketched were standing together at the edge of a pool on the river, gazing stolidly at a solitary pelican. At home, it always nests in colonies known as heronries, and I believe that in England

[Illustration: HERONS

At dawn on the Nile.]

it is rather increasing than decreasing in numbers. The young birds are peculiarly ugly, and have a rather mad-looking hairy down covering on their heads, which is retained till they have become almost fully fledged. When I have been watching Herons standing, patiently waiting by the hour together, for fish to come within striking distance, I have often wondered if there was any truth in the old homely legend of their legs having some potent fascination by reason of an exuded oil which the fish love, that tempts them to come swimming round and round till they approach too near and are adroitly caught. Anyhow this is certain, it does not walk after them; they come to it. Having chosen its spot, it remains there as quiet as a mouse, and with the true fisherman's patience bides its time. It is a curious sight to see the way in which it perches on a branch. It drops its long, thin legs and seizes it with its extended toes, but always seems to find it hard to get its balance, and as the branch sways with its weight it bends its body this way and that, all the time keeping its wings expanded as if trying to get just the right balance, and you realise then that it is no true "perching bird." It lends its picturesque form to Egyptian scenery, just as it does to our homely English waters or wilder Scotch lochs; it always, somehow, goes well with the landscape. Shelley says, "It may be seen in considerable numbers in company with Spoonbills, Pelicans, and other waders." And it is one of the curious facts about bird life here, that so many of the birds that we know only as solitary and not at all given to consorting in flocks, either with their own species or any other, save at their breeding stations, frequently do show a complete difference of habit in this respect in this country. From the boat I remember seeing a singular line of seven birds flying towards us. The first was a Heron, then a Spoonbill, then a Heron followed by two Spoonbills, and the straight line ended with two Herons, all so close together, the bill of one nearly touching the tail of the other, and all keeping time with the utmost precision.

To enumerate all the places I have watched this bird at is unnecessary, as at one time or another I have seen it everywhere. Its food is fish, frogs, and it is particularly fond of eels.

BUFF-BACKED HERON

Ardeola russata

General plumage white, delicately tinged with buff on head, nape, crop, and back; beak and bare skin round eye, yellow; eye, light yellow; legs, olive-black. Total length, 20·5 inches.

This is the bird that is most often called the Egret, and it is very similar, as in its winter plumage it is practically white all over--just a line of buff on the crown. It is of the greatest service to the cattle when feeding or resting, as it seems to know no fear, and settles on their backs, one or two at a time, and diligently searches for flies and ticks and all those parasitic things that infest the poor brutes. I have seen them walk right up to one of the recumbent buffaloes, and go solemnly picking things off it all the way round its face, even off its eyes, whilst the creature never ceased chewing the cud, and one saw its jaw going solemnly round and round whilst the bird did its best to free it from the pests. What Egypt would be without all these birds, who are ceaselessly at work clearing the air of insect life, it is appalling to contemplate, for with them the clouds of flies, midges, mosquitoes and the rest render life in some places intolerable. No one quite knows what flies are till one tries sketching out of doors here. With your palette on one hand and brushes in the other, you are an easy prey to them, and they take every advantage of the fact. They will cluster by the dozen on your face, walk in brigades over the ridge of your nose, sting you on the hand, at the back where your palette hides them from your view, and even if you have a boy with a fly-wisp they will never leave you. I have found them at their worst at the edges of the cultivated land, where trees are often growing picturesquely, tempting the artist to sit in their seductive shade; with most dire results, as one is almost eaten alive, and one envies the cattle who are being so assiduously attended to by these kindly fly-catchers.

The Egret is one of the many birds that the dragoman makes the tourist happy by calling "the Ibis," and the number that return to their friends gleefully telling how they saw a flock of Ibises grows every season. In the article on the Ibis it is shown how ludicrously untrustworthy is the dragoman's Natural History information.

The Buff-backed Heron may often be seen flying up or down the river in little parties of

[Illustration: BUFF-BACKED HERON]