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
