Egypt of the Pharaohs and of the Khedivé

by F. Barham Zincke

In the picture of Nature the birds’ place must not be left quite in blank. The first to greet you in Egypt are two familiar home companions. As you near the harbour of Alexandria—and even sometimes before you sight the land—the wagtail comes on board, and, without a moment lost in reconnoitring, begins to look about the deck for crumbs. He flirts his tail as usual. Here, in our bird-persecuting part of the world, it means that he is on the alert; but on the deck of the steamer, that is entering the harbour of Alexandria, it means, ‘All right. I am not afraid: I am quite at home. Every one here is glad to see me, and I am glad to see you. Here no boys throw stones at me.’ Every flirt of his tail sends a little ripple of pleasure over your heart.

On entering Alexandria your only thought is of what is new and strange: the last that would occur to you would be that you were about to encounter an old friend. But the first object that meets your eye, as you step through the custom-house gate into the street, is a very old cosmopolitan friend you left in London a few weeks back—the house sparrow. ‘What!’ you exclaim. ‘You here, you ornithological gamin?’

As you go by rail to Cairo, and as you ascend the river, you are never long out of sight of a mud-built village. The saddest and sorriest of habitations for men and women are these Egyptian villages I have ever anywhere seen. West India negro huts are better-furnished abodes. Their best-lodged inhabitants are the pigeons. The only storey that is ever raised above the ground-floor—which is of the ground as well as on it—is the dovecot. This, therefore, is the only object in a village which attracts the eye of the passer-by. In the Delta the fashion appears to be to raise a rude roundish mud tower, full of earthenware pots for the pigeons to breed in. These are inserted—of course, lying horizontally—in the mud of which the tower is built. In Upper Egypt these towers have assumed the square form, about twelve feet each side. Three or four tiers of branches are carried round the building for the pigeons to settle on; these are stuck into the wall, and as the branches depart from the straight line, each according to its own bent, each belt of branches presents a very irregular appearance. No village is without its dovecotes. From the summit of the propylæa of the grand Ptolemaic temple of Edfou, I counted about forty of these dovecotes on the tops of the mud hovels below me. The number of domestic pigeons in Egypt must be several times as great as that of the population. I suppose if they kept pigs they would not keep so many pigeons. They must consume a great quantity of corn—more, perhaps, than would be required for the pigs of a pig-eating population as large as that of Egypt.

In going up the river from Cairo, the first birds that put in their appearance are the pelicans. They are generally in parties of eight or ten. They are fishing, in a line across the stream. They always keep out of gun-shot. They loom large, showing about the size of swans, and, as seen from a distance, of the colour of cygnets. They do not care to go more than about two hundred miles above Cairo.

All up the river you see herons of several species: like their English congeners, they are patient watchers for passing fish; and when watching, more or less solitary.

The wet sand and mud banks are thronged with countless mobs of ducks of various kinds, of geese, and of other aquatic birds. Experience has taught them also how far guns carry.

As to the geese, you frequently hear and see overhead large flights of them. Sometimes as many as four or five flocks are in sight at one time. They are going to and from their feeding grounds. When aloft they are generally in some figure; but very far from always, as some say, in the form of a wedge. Perhaps the figure in which they place themselves depends on the currents of wind where they are. If they are driving against the wind, the wedge would of course be the best figure for them to move in; but if they are going down the wind a line one deep would be better, as it would give the full help of the current to every individual of the flock; and this is a figure they are often seen in. In the lately disinterred temple of Serapis, between the dilapidated pyramids of Sakkarah, and the marvellous catacomb of the sacred bulls, I saw, in painted relief, a scene which tells us how geese were fattened in old Egypt. Men are seated at each end of a table which is covered with pellets, probably of some kind of meal. Each man has a goose in his lap, down the throat of which he is cramming one of these pellets. The priests of Serapis liked their geese fat.

In the neighbourhood of Siout I saw several flocks of flamingoes on the wing. As they approached with the sun upon them, they showed like discs of silver, supported on black wings. When they had passed, the eye was charmed with their backs of rosy pink.

Among the land birds the commonest in the village palm groves are the Egyptian turtle-dove, and the hopoe. Where there are so many pigeons you might expect a great many hawks: these you see of several species. Larks are everywhere in the fields. You frequently fall in with bevies of quail, and with plovers. A small owl is common: I heard and saw it during the day-time, in the tamarisks near the pool in the sacred enclosure of Karnak, and elsewhere.

Our English rook—it has a wide range, being a denizen of Africa as well as of every part of Europe—appears among the birds of Egypt. My bedroom at Zech’s, late Shepheard’s, Hotel at Cairo was off the back gallery, looking across a road on to a large garden. Exactly opposite the window was the sakia which supplied the garden with water. The creaking and shrieking, every morning, of its lumbering wooden wheel whilst it was being worked by a patient, plodding bullock, was far from unpleasant to one who wished to become acquainted with the sights and sounds of Egypt. In this garden were many palms. These were tenanted by a colony of rooks. I was, day after day, interested in noting that they had just the same bearing and manners as their English relatives. Like them, they sought the society of man, and seemed to watch his doings with the same kind of satisfied observation, accompanied with the same harsh cries, expressive of security and confidence. They were in every respect quite undistinguishable from our London rooks, and those that affect our rural homesteads. I looked upon them with the thought that just as we, at this day, are pleased with their social and familiar ways, so must, many thousand years ago, have been the old Egyptians.