seeing the Common Swallow was February 1, 1908, at the Mût Lake, Karnak; but I have no doubt that at some parts up or down the river they can be seen all the winter through. After February, day by day, the great hosts of them, all flying with earnest intent due north, makes one of the most interesting sights to English eyes in all Egypt, as one can well believe that some of those very birds will be the first to greet one on his return home in April or May. I have often seen them hawking about over the waters of some small insect-haunted pool in friendly company with their Oriental cousins, and have always marvelled at their leaving a land with its constant sun and amazing wealth of flies and insects, for our own comparatively inclement clime and poor food-supply. In a room I slept in, at the hut at Deir-el-Bahari, there was a swallow’s nest just over my bed, and though it was too early when I was there in January for them to start breeding, on several occasions the Egyptian Swallows came fluttering in through the unglazed windows, just to take a look round and see that all was right for later on. On February 14 I saw two, which were clearly mated birds, on the ground, picking up scraps of twigs and straw, and then rapidly fly away. In a few minutes both were back again, and one seemed to be taking mud, whilst the other kept searching for just the right-sized bit of dry grass or straw; it took up many bits, but they did not seem to satisfy the requirements and were dropped, till just the right-sized piece was forthcoming. So it is clear they must start nesting very early, and pretty certainly will have, as our British bird does, two broods in the season. There is practically little or no difference in the habits of either of these two Swallows—the one might be the other—and though I have watched them long and carefully, I am unable to recall any single peculiarity that our Swallow has from the Egyptian. Both alike have that habit of dipping momentarily into the water, then rising for a short distance, and again fluttering down on to the surface with a slight splash, and both kinds seem to have boundless energy and strength, tearing up and down incessantly by the hour together. So many birds rest in flight by making long sweeping curves with rigidly outstretched wings. Kites and Vultures are great exponents of this power, but the Swallows, though they can do it of course, are nearly all the day careering in headlong flight with restless energy, and the
long journey they take in migration is probably, under fair climatic conditions, nothing at all formidable to them. If, however, they get caught in some storm or blizzard-like gale, it is an altogether different matter, and there are many records of the Mediterranean coast being littered with hundreds of dead bodies of the Swallows that have succumbed and fallen helplessly into the sea. Watching them flying about the river, or above the growing crops, one finds it difficult to picture a more perfectly happy existence—food in abundance, sunshine all day long, and a kindly welcome at roosting time in every house or rough mud-hut—and cheery and grateful it seems for it all, if one may judge by its lively twittering song. No wonder every country has made a special favourite of the Swallow. It is entirely insectivorous, and, as has been said of several other birds, the use that they are in this land of plagues of flies is enormous.
Swallows’ nests, as is well known, are generally placed on some horizontal beam or masonry. Martin’s nests are placed on the perpendicular sides of buildings, and by choice close under the eaves of our broad-roofed houses. Both are built of mud, and the mud is very generally obtained from roadsides or by the river’s edge, but if any of my readers will endeavour to build up a nest with such mud against an upright wall, they will attempt an all but impossible task, for as the curve begins to grow outwards it will with its own weight fall away from the wall. What is it, then, that the Swallows and Martins do to make their nests adhere? If you examine an old last year’s nest and try and break the outer shell, you will find it very tough considering the material it is made of, and the toughening matter is a secretion of saliva. In the case of some species of Swallows this secretion is so great that the whole of the nest is made of that substance alone, with the lining of a few feathers. And it is this nest, cleaned of all foreign matter which is the base of the much-esteemed delicacy known as birdnest soup. Few who have partaken of this luxury are perhaps aware that it is simply solidified saliva.
Of Martins there are two—the House-Martin and the Sand-Martin, both birds common to Great Britain. Of the latter, literally thousands and thousands will be seen nesting in colonies in the mud banks by all who go up and down the river; restless and cheerful, they are one of the welcome sights of the Nile trip, and often for miles at a stretch the whole banks are honeycombed with their nesting holes, and ever and again, moved by some common impulse, hundreds come rushing out and over the boat with noisy twitterings, and then scattering, gradually return in ones and twos to their homes again.