Boros István (szerk.): A Magyar Természettudományi Múzeum évkönyve 51. (Budapest 1959)

Horváth, L.: The results of the zoological collecting trip to Egypt in 1957, of the Natural History Museum, Budapest 7. The ornithological results

The Results of the Zoological Collecting Trip to Egypt in 1957, of the Natural History Museum, Budapest 7. The Ornithological Results By L. HORVÁTH, Budapest The zoological expedition of the Hungarian Natural History Museum set off from Budapest on 14 August 1957. As one on the staff of the research group, I set foot in Africa on 2 September, and started on the back journey in the evening of 29 November. During our stay in Egypt for almost three months, I visited almost every part of it. Observations and collectings made from day to day resulted in data which afford a dependable base to present an adequate picture of the recent avifauna of the Region. The methods of observations and collec.ings were such as to ensure both a qualitative and quantitative analysis of the materials gathered. With regard to observations, I made notes of not only every species but. of every single specimen : this method proved to be most fruitful at the subsequent evaluation of the data of my notebooks. The main project of the collectings was, of course, the obtaining of as high a number of bird species as possible. I paid special attention to collect series of species only which promised interesting results from a systematical point of view. During our stay of three months in Egypt, I was in the possession of rifles for one month only. This fact explains partly the cause why the number of collected specimens did not exceed two hundred. For a further elucidation, I have yet to note that I made the almost 3000 km route — over and across almost the whole territory of Egypt — in the possession of firearms during this very period. Furthermore, I have yet to mention the most relevant circumstance concerning collecting problems, namely, that I myself had to do half of the tasks involved in preparing the birds, since the preparator of the research group was simultaneously also the driver of our car and so had to spend a good part of his time with its repairing and driving. In the view of circumstances like these, I have to qualify the results of the collectings as excellent, and the more so as they consisted of medium large birds in at least one-halfth part of them ; indeed, we captured some large-bodied species, too. To a quantitative evaluation of the collectings belongs yet the stressing of the fact that every bird was completely prepared, fit for the skin collection. For the qualitative assessing of the collecting results, I find it also necessary to point out already in the introduction that, by a very discriminative collecting, we were successful to conserve 68 species. The 68 species collected belong to 50 genera, and represent 73 subspecies, of which latter, one proved to be new for science. It belongs yet to the qualitative side of the evaluation ledger that, besides endeavoring to attain as high a number of species as possible, I tried to gather primarily species which occur in Africa only or are at least not European migrants. From this standpoint, the 73 subspecies can be categorized as follows : 47 subspecies are African birds, or rather, some of them are Asiatic migrants, or more exactly, birds which are not enumerated in any European list of species ; 26 subspecies are European migrants, or more exactly, species which occur also in Europe or whose range includes Egypt, too. The relatively high number of the collected species and subspecies gives a better insight into factual relations if we compare it with the number of species observed during the three months. By daily observations from 2 September till 29 November, I noted a total of 127 bird species in Egypt. However, not only collectings did result in news for science but observations, too. There were, among the 127 species recorded, 2 which were not yet noted in Egypt. Apart of these, my notes include numerous species which are very rare and whose occurrence in the region was supported only by one or two records up to now or were not sighted in Egypt since some decades.