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.”