Some cattle egrets decorate the top of a sign saying "Shubramant, the door to the date". Right. Clear as mud. Probably they meant "the door to the past" as this village is on the road to Abu Sir, Sakkara and Dahshur, but we had fun figuring out wether maybe the date was yesterday, tomorrow, or next Wednesday.
The hoopoes love my lawn right after we've watered it because the worms and grubs come up to the surface where they are easily caught. The birds are striking with their black and white bands on the wings and the crest.
Apologies to all my readers but a week ago I went into the hospital for a bilateral knee replacement and I'm not doing much photography yet. For that matter, I'm not doing much of anything really. This is a shot of my annual trip to FAO Schwartz with my daughter in New York earlier in June. For a while you'll be getting a weird random assortment of photos, but this one is special for Merri Melde of theequestrianvagabond.blogspot.com and her friend the Raven.
A cattle egret stands watch as a water buffalo snoozes in the morning shade. The buffalo are an essential part of the rural economy providing milk products for the families, manure for fertilising the fields, and disposable income from the sale of the extra milk. Besides that, they are very sweet and rather extraordinary looking animals.
One of our extra-large hooded crows landed on the head of the Sphinx and stood there surveying the general scene. I immediately wished I had a good telephoto lens and decided to take the shot anyway.
There is a regal quality to water buffalo. They stand and wait for their farmers to bring them piles of fresh green fodder to eat, enjoy the sun and fresh air and the careful ministrations of the cattle egrets who pick any passing flies or other insects from their skins. As we pass the tethered buffalo, she looks at us with calm interest as though we might be bringing news of some sort...or even better food!
Our wild red/brown doves are interesting. I have about six of them that were found as babies and brought to the aviary to learn to fly, but then they never want to leave. Doves, quite contrary to their reputations as bearers of peace, are aggressive and territorial. With a gang of them inside the aviary, the doves outside are busy threatening the aviary doves with whatever it is that doves do and then nesting to bring up their young dovelets.
As the dates ripen and fall during the harvest, the crows gather after the workers have gone to eat the sweet fruit lying on the ground.
I've been away in New York for a week or so for my son's wedding, so no photos to post. The wedding was lovely and the bride and groom took off for a honeymoon in Alaska to do whale-watching, kayaking, and glacier-stomping. On my return, I went out for a look at a wall that the Antiquities Department is building to block us off from our desert and discovered a huge flock of European Storks resting in a mango grove. I was quietly shooting photos when about half the flock suddenly took off. It's late in the season for storks and we've had an unusual number flying through this area and taking rest stops. The change in migration pattern makes me wonder what is happening in our world.
Every year the European storks travel from Germany and other parts of that continent south to Africa in the winter and then back again in the spring. Usually we see a few of them who have stopped off in our fields for rest over night before continuing on the next day. This year we've seen them daily in flocks of ten to twenty birds on their northward flight. I don't know why there are so many more of them this year unless the wind currents have changed a bit. The storks will be out in the fields early in the morning and then as the air heats up they catch the thermals soaring up gradually in spirals until they reach almost 20 thousand feet where they catch the northbound jet streams. On the ground they are ungainly, tall (a metre) but light weight, but in the air they are extraordinary.
The hoopoe (hudhud in Arabic) looks like a ground dwelling woodpecker, a bit reminiscent of the roadrunner of the southwest United States. Their images are prominent in wall paintings in the old Egyptian tombs. It doesn't fly far and spends most of the time on the ground probing the soil for insects. Their plumage is a chestnut red, black and white, quite striking. This young one was found by a neighbour's dog, probably having fallen from a nest in a hole in a wall or tree. It's living in the aviary these days and being handfed on raw chicken breast. I sort of doubt that it will be able to be released because it's pretty well accustomed to getting food from humans but I have three large flight cages where chickens, ducks, geese, turkeys, doves, pigeons and some parrots live in relative harmony. And it does seem to like the chicken breast....
A cattle egret hunts frogs in a field of garawa sukaraya...also known as African Love Grass. It's planted as a summer forage for the animals that are still so necessary to move the produce from the fields to the markets.
This rather medieval looking structure is a tower for the raising of pigeons. Pots and pipes are cemented together in horizontal layers with some of them opening to the outside of the tower and others to the inside. Inside the tower there is either a ladder or a stairway by means of which the owner can climb up to claim the squabs (young feathered pigeons who are not yet flying) to confine them and fatten them up for eating. Pigeon is eaten stuffed with either rice or whole wheat or it is grilled or made into casseroles. They are a dark meat bird and very tasty. Most pigeons that have any colour plumage other than the feral dark greyish blue (the wild rock dove) are owned by someone in Egypt because they are so easy to raise.
One of the most famous incidents of Egyptian/British conflict (the Dinshaway Incident) came about as a result of a group of British soldiers going out pigeon shooting near the village of Dinshaway in 1906 not realising that the pigeons they were shooting belonged to the villagers. When the villagers protested, the soldiers not understanding Arabic, thought that they were being attacked and began shooting at villagers and running away in the extreme heat. Although the villagers actually tried to assist the officers suffering from heat stroke, one officer died and the villagers were rather brutally punished for defending their pigeons, leading to a great deal of anger.
It's nesting season for the cattle egrets and they are building their nests in the casuarina and eucalyptus trees that line the canals in the country...and in the trees along the perimeter of the Giza Zoo, much to the dismay of those who must park cars under them. The "I'm coming home with dinner, honey." calls and the squabbles of neighbours make for good entertainment for bird watchers. Soon there will be spikey white balls of fluff in the nests demanding attention too.
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