Everest, Mount (China and Nepal); Mount Everest Expedition (1922); Mountaineering expeditions--Everest, Mount (China and Nepal)
As to the birds, we were fortunate in having been able to go over Dr.
Wollaston’s collection with Mr. Norman B. Kinnear of the Natural History
Museum, who provided us in addition with a series of careful notes by
which we could identify those likely to be met with in localities where
we could not shoot. It is hoped that our material will be found
sufficient for Mr. Kinnear to publish a supplement to his recent paper
in the _Ibis_ on last year’s collection.
Dr. Percy R. Lowe, Keeper of Birds of the Natural History Museum, was
particularly anxious for us to obtain for him a specimen of the
Himalayan or Ibis-billed Curlew (_Ibidorhynchus struthersi_) in the
flesh, for purposes of dissection, nothing being known of its anatomy up
to the present. Luckily this bird haunts the Chumbi Valley, and Norton
and I were able to spend a day in its pursuit. It is of the form of a
small curlew, of a general french-grey hue with bold dark markings, and
coral red beak and legs. There were several of these birds, not yet
(April 3) paired, about Yatung in the Chumbi Valley, but they were very
wary. They utter a high-pitched wader-like note not at all resembling
our curlew. They always flew directly over the main river, whence we
never could have retrieved them. The shores of this river are fringed by
beaches of large round grey pebbles, and resting amongst these the birds
were invisible. Eventually I lay up under the bank and Norton succeeded
in driving a bird on to an island in mid-stream, where I shot it. With
an outward display of truly scientific eagerness we divested ourselves
of our nether garments and waded waist deep through the torrent. We came
near quarrelling as to whether the water or the air was the coldest. But
at any rate we retrieved our bird, and what is more brought it, duly
preserved in spirits, through all the trials of travel and climate,
safely back to Dr. Lowe.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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