Bristle tails (silver fish) were unpleasantly destructive, and boring bees do much damage by perforating the palm-trunk joists and rafters of the houses and rendering them unsafe. House flies were quite common enough to be a nuisance, though not to the extent usually found in the Nile Valley. Mosquitoes were present in only small numbers in Mut, owing probably to the scarcity of water in the neighbourhood.
Dragon flies were conspicuously numerous—a dark red, a greenish variety and a beautiful steely blue kind being, so far as I saw, the most common.
In the spring there is a large immigration of birds into the oasis, coming up from the south-west. Sand grouse—both a pintailed and a spotted variety—are to be met with on the outskirts of the oasis and in the parts of it remote from the villages. Quail, duck, snipe and various water birds abound in the oasis at certain seasons. Kites I never saw or heard, but eagles were several times seen. Also a bird of the hawk species. Ravens exist in small numbers.
Pigeons are fairly well represented, a large wild pigeon—the blue rock apparently, which lives largely in the cliffs surrounding the oasis—being common. These at times give very good sport; in the open they are far too wary to be approached within gun-shot. But in the evening they come down to the wells to drink, usually choosing one that is removed some distance from the villages.
But these pigeons proved to be very poor eating, their flesh being hard and dry, and not to be compared with sand grouse for the pot.
The sand grouse, too, were singularly hard to bag. The only place where I ever succeeded in shooting any was on the Gubary road between Dakhla and Kharga Oases. I found them fairly numerous there, being generally to be seen in the early morning at the places where the bedawin camped for the night. As the day grew older they left the road altogether and flew off into the desert.
The birds that interested me most in the oases were the kimri, or palm doves. There are at least two kinds in Dakhla, the kimri beladi, or local palm dove, and the kimri sifi, or summer dove. The former seems to be resident in Dakhla all the year round; but the latter are migrants, coming into the oasis in March and returning in the autumn after the date harvest. They take somewhat the place in Dakhla that the cuckoo does in England, their advent being regarded as a sign that the winter is past and the summer close at hand. The palm groves of the oasis, when the hot weather comes on, swarm with these pretty little birds, whose soft cooing as they sit swaying in the palm tops is a most melodious sound—extremely pleasant and soothing after a long hot desert journey.
The whole question of the animal and vegetable life in these desolate regions is one of great interest. In spite of the intensely arid nature of these deserts, they support in some marvellous way a considerable amount of life.
Small lizards were often to be seen in the desert scuttling about the ground. They run with extraordinary speed, and are very difficult to catch. The usual way, I believe, is to throw a handkerchief on the ground and to drive the lizard towards it, when it will frequently run under the handkerchief to shelter, and can then be easily picked up. I found that, though they could run very fast for a short distance, they very soon tired, and, if steadily followed up for a hundred yards, without allowing them time to rest, they became so exhausted that they could be easily secured.
I never saw a specimen of the waran, or large lizard, in the desert, but on one occasion saw what looked like its track. It resembled the trail of a large-bodied lizard crawling slowly over the sand. My men, however, declared it to be the track of an issulla, which they described as a creature between a snake and a lizard in shape, which, when approached, will fly at an intruder, rising into the air after a rapid run on membraneous wings stretched between its legs—acting apparently somewhat like an aeroplane. They said its bite was poisonous, and generally fatal, but that, if it failed to strike home during its flight, it fell on the ground and burst! The existence of such a reptile—if we exclude the bursting part of the story—is perhaps not absolutely impossible. One has to take native statements of this kind with more than the usual amount of salt; but it does not do to ignore them entirely.