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Some Birds from Sinai and Palestine

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Some Birds from Sinai and Palestine THE AUK: A QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ORNITHOLOGY. VOL. XXXlI. JULY, 1915. NO. 3. SOME BIRDS FROM SINAI AND PALESTINE. BY JOHN C. PHILLIPS. Plate XVII. WE left Suez on March 22, 1914, for a brief trip through the Sinai Peninsula, and then to Jerusalem,via Akaba and the east side of the Dead Sea. Mr. Mann was to pursue insects and reptilesand both of us put in ourspare moments chasing birds and trapping mammals. As muchof the route lay ttn'ougha desert, our catchwas small,except for the reptiles. Mammals, thoughin places numerous,were hard to tr•/p and many specimenswere stolenby jackalsor eatenby antsbefore daylight, so that we often despairedof bringingback a representativelot. This journeytakes one throughseveral very differenttypes of country. The bare desertaround Suez, very similar to the deserts of Egypt; then the ruggedSinai pla•teau with peaksup to 8500 feet in height; the low desertsaround Akaba, with an Arabian and Dead Sea fauna; the bare-windswept 5000 foot plateau east of the Dead Sea depression;and lastly the oleanderand cane junglesof the Dead Seaand its affluents,with a sub-tropicalfauna and flora, and an altitude as low as 1300 feet beneaththe level of the sea. When you leaveSuez behind, you enterupon the worststage of the journey. The spring sun is scorchingfrom nine o'clock till four, and the level stretchesof gravel and limestoneare hardly 273 THE AUK. VOL. XXXII PLATE XVII BUTLER'SOWL Strix butleri(Hume) 274 P•qI,•L•rs,Birds of Sinai. [July[ Auk relievedby the sight of a singlecreature, barring lizardsand scor- pions. At rare intervalsan Egyptian Vulture sailsoverhead or a pair of Ravensfollows the caravanfor a time. At. nightfallone or two White Wagtails gather around the tents and run about under the very feet of the earnels. There are only two spotsalong this road wherebirds can really exist. One is the Wells of •¾Ioses,eight miles from Suez, and the other is Wady Gharandel,identified with the Elim of the Bible Exodus. At thislatter place we arrived on the third day, earnping at the upper end of the Wady where there was a well somesix feet below the surfaceof the ground and a number of palms, sayal thorntrees and slyrubsof varioussorts. Here we got a few birds, a Great Grey Shrike, Wheatears in abundance,Ruppell's and Bonelli's Warblers, Chiff-Chaffs, Spanish Sparrowsand the pale Cray-Martins. Besides these we saw that very characteristic plaingray warbler of the SinaiPeninsula, Cereomela. asthenia, the Chat-Robin or Black-start. Here too we began to see the Sinai Desert Larks. BetweenGharandel and Wady Feran, where you first find real water, there is almostnothing of interestto the ornithologist. For part of a day the road runs along the coastof the Red Sea under rough eliifs, but not a gull or a shore-birdenlivens the monotony of that shellstrewn shore. You begin to seesome of the handsome Black and White Chatsalong this part of the road. We took three species,the White-rumped, Pied and Hooded Chat. These are very striking birds, extremely shy and by no means easy to get. The White-rumped has a very low but sweet song. Wherever thereis any vegetationat all onesees if he looksdosely, an extraor- dinary little wren-like cock-tailedwarbler, Scotoccrainiquietus that is an adept at hiding. If I rememberrightly, it hasa peculiar little Chickadee-likenote which I hem'dlong before I ever managed to get the bird. When onegets into the ravinesabout Petra this little bird is more plentiful. Then another very characteristic warbler of the scatteredsayal trees is the LesserWhite-throat which returns to Palestineand breedsin great numbers. You can identifyit a longway off by its monotonous"sip-sip-sip." I think it is quite the eommonestspring bird of Sinai. On April 1, we arrived at the beautifulbrook of Feran and Vol. 1915XXXII] J PHILLIPS,Birds of Sinai. 275 pitched camp at the mouth of the Wady Aley,qt; to students of Bible history, one of the most interestingspots on the peninsula. Most of the ancient traditions center around this place, the ruins of an ancient church and a fine monastery crown the hill of El- Mcharter, and the rocks are fiddled with gravesand cells of-an- chorites. The serratedpeak of Serbalrises just to the south,the most picturesquemountain on the peninsula,and still claiming distinctionas the mountainof the Law Giving, in spite of the at- tempts of the Greek monks to transport all the bible traditions to the neighborhoodof Gebel Katherina. The brook of Feran waters three miles of a ruggedcanyon filled with palms, nebk and tamarisk. The climate at this elevation is wonderful, and the bothersome flies and heat of the desert have been left behind. The Palestine Bulbul mingleshis Robin-like songwith the purring of the stream, and a fair number of other birdsare to be found,especially at the headsprings. In the thick palms a few shy Tristram's Grackles evaded my gun. We took both the Rock and the Blue Thrush, the latter supposedto be "the sparrowthat sitteth aloneupon the house-tops"of scripture. Then there were Redstarts,several Warblers, two speciesof Wag- tails, Tree Pipits and SpanishSparrows. I evensaw a Snipe. In the neighboringvalleys the lively little Sand Partridge was abun- dant. It is hard to dismissthe beautiful little See-see(Amnoperdix heyi)without a word of notice. He is the only fat thing in Sinai. He lives in flocksof fair size,and curiouslyenough, numbers are seentogether even in the breedingseason. Onemorning (April 9), I watchedthe mating anticsof a pair of thesebirds. The female was squatting in the sand and the male constantlyhopped over andran around her. Everylittle while they would seize each ot.h'er by the billsand wrestle about with muchflapping of wingsand their feathersflying. They kept this up for ten minutesand I had to leave them still at it. Best of all, at Feran however,was the captureof a Butler's Owl (Strix butleri,see ]Plate XVII), our specimenmaking the third one known to science.. The first one was sent to Hume from South Baluehistan,and the secondcame from Sinai. The background of the plate showsthe vale of Feran and the roughoutline of Mt.' Serbalwhere the ibex and the leopardstill wander. 276 rH•mrs,Birds of Sinai. [July[ Auk We only spent three days at Feran and then moved southto the conventof St. Catherine. On the way,.passing up the rugged defile, Nekb-el-Hawa, or passof the winds, we met our first Rose Finches. This rare rock-lovingCarpoda9us lives only on the highest and roughestparts of the country,keeping in little scatteredtroops. It is a very wild and restlessbird and what it managesto live upon I do not know. I saw it again only at Petra. Zedlitz (1912), says that the bird doesnot breed till its secondyear. From my speci- mens I should say that both sexeswere rose-coloredwhen adult, but others have described the females as plain colored, like the young males. In the garden of the convent of St. Catherine there were a few birds but nothingthat we had not seenbefore. A sidetrip to Um Shomer,a tfigh mountain in the south, took us over an absolutely birdlessregion with nothing but Desert Larks and Crag Martins at the rarest intervals. One morning at sunrise I found myself high up on a spur of Um-Shomer. I thought I never had seensuch desolategrandeur. Westwardabout fifty milesof the Gulf of Suez was in sight, bathed in a light mist, while a long stretchof the Gulf of Akabalimited the eastgnd northeast view, backed by the low peaked mountains of Midian. The whole rugged south end of Sinai was spreadout like a relief map, and not a soundcame to my ears.--A single Eagle soared about the crags of Um-Shomer, perhapslooking for a young ibex, but he was all alone. Far out on the Gulf of Suez as the mist cleared I could see with my glass the big steamersplying to the endsof the world. Someof the scarcityof birdsin Sinai may have beendue to lack of rain. Usuallyrain and snowfall everywinter, but •xowfor severalyears there has beenpractically a continualdrought. The vegetation is much reduced and every sayal tree is cut back for camel food. From the conventto Akaba at the head of the long gulf of that name,we did not seemany birds. For dayswe journeyedalong the beachof the gulf meetingvery rarely a Sandpiper,or oneor two European Kingfishers. At intervals there were groupsof palm trees with a few Warblers, Chats and Wheatears about them. At Akabawe had to wait eightdays for our mules. A longpalm grove and the remainsof quite a large town with a Turkish fort Vol. 1915XXXII] / PHILLIPS,Birds of Sinai. 277 stretchesalong the beach. The placeis interestingto studentsof migrationfor it seemsto be on the great highwayfrom northeast Africa up the great Dead Sea depressionto Palestine,and so over westernAsia. We took a goodmany birds here, amongthem a Land Rail in a half deadcondition, a Baillon'sCrake, onespecimen of the rare Audouin's Gull, here far east and south of its eastern limit, a stray BurgomasterGull, alsowell southof its range,some Dunlins and Greenshankand a couple of GarganeyTeal. One night we saw comingnorth up the gulf the most extraordinary flock of hawks I have ever heard of. We judged there were 1500 to 1800 scatteredout over a wide area. We shotfour and they were of one species,the Levant SparrowHawk. Sucha flockmust have been migrating from Africa or perhapssouth Arabia, but the specieshas only been taken once or twice in Egypt and never elsewhere in Africa. Among the palm trees hundredsof splendid European Bee- eaters with their tuneful chirping were constantly at work on a small sand beetle that was just then having its nuptial flight.
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