Natural history -- Sahara; Sahara -- Description and travel
_Zunkusharat_, the great Curve-billed Desert Lark: “An evil
bird of which all nomads teach their children to beware, because
of its alluring habit of flying only a short distance before
resettling. Unwary boys think they can catch it easily and are thus
led away into the desert without watching where they go; until they
are lost.”
_Ebakorian-Mallam_ is a name sometimes applied to the Buff Saharan
Lark, the latter part of the name being Hausa, meaning scholar or
teacher or priest. “For it is a saintly bird that is always at
peace, and robs no one. It is content with the seeds by the wayside,
and disturbs neither cultivation nor place of dwelling.”
_Bi-Allah_. The tiny Red Senegal Waxbill, is “The bird of
perpetual content. All day it picks about the doorstep and roosts
in the lintel; and all our people know it as emblematic of peace
and unconcern, and so have termed it ‘the tiny priest of God.’”
_Tedabear Takleet_, the Palm Dove, is smaller than the Grey Dove,
and, when both happen to be feeding or drinking together, the larger
dove domineers the smaller. _Takleet_ means slave, and therefore, in
Tuareg folklore, “the Palm Dove is the slave of the Grey Dove.”
_Tilel_, the Guinea Fowl, has a curious legend concerning it which
has arisen because of the blood-red wattles on the head. “See,
he is marked by the blow where man hit him, because he would not
show people place of water. And ever since that time he has been a
dazed fool bird, so that anyone is able to catch him in the trees.”
The outcome of prolonged research in the Sahara during 1919 and
1920, and again in 1922 and 1923, was that altogether 134 different
species and subspecies of birds were collected for Lord Rothschild
from the Sahara, and seventy-three additional varieties from the
Western Sudan.
The Sahara specimens comprised the following birds[19]:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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