We had to take a break from catching birds over the weekend, because no one works on the weekend, including our contacts in the villages around Damietta. For those of you in the States who are not familiar with the middle-eastern weekend, Thursday is the last day of the workweek with Friday and Saturday being days off and work starting again on Sunday. On Sunday evening we headed back to the village of Rekabia, where Badran had found some more nests for us, hopefully with fewer ghosts and bats this time. We tried to negotiate with the owner of the haunted Rice Mill to let us catch when it was light out and safe from the ghost, but the owner refused, convinced that if we caught the swallows they would get angry and tell the ghost who would reek havoc. Hard to argue with that one, so we went in search of other nests.
The night started with the usual mob of children. We are certainly the most exciting thing that has happened in the village in a long time. The first nest we caught was in a little room, which was locked, but we could see the birds through a small high open window. The villagers wheeled over a wagon for us to stand on so we set the net and Liz crawled in. We were quite surprised when we pulled the birds out of the net that the male already had a band on. Is someone else catching swallows here? Turns out that he was from the bat room, what he was doing there, sleeping away from home, we are not sure. It seemed fated that we would happen to catch the one nest in the village with a bird we had already caught. We still had one new bird in hand and were feeling confident that it would be a successful night. There were so many barn swallows in this village after all.
The night started with the usual mob of children. We are certainly the most exciting thing that has happened in the village in a long time. The first nest we caught was in a little room, which was locked, but we could see the birds through a small high open window. The villagers wheeled over a wagon for us to stand on so we set the net and Liz crawled in. We were quite surprised when we pulled the birds out of the net that the male already had a band on. Is someone else catching swallows here? Turns out that he was from the bat room, what he was doing there, sleeping away from home, we are not sure. It seemed fated that we would happen to catch the one nest in the village with a bird we had already caught. We still had one new bird in hand and were feeling confident that it would be a successful night. There were so many barn swallows in this village after all.
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Badran told us that he had another place where we could catch with at least four more nests in it. As we were about to head off Basma informed us that we had a flat tire on the car and needed to get it fixed right away. I will take a moment to describe Egypt roads and driving. There are no set lanes on roads here, it ranges from one to four depending on traffic. There are random obstacles set up to divert traffic from certain parts in the road, concrete barriers, gates, metal pipes, buckets, logs, or whatever is handy. You also share the road with donkey and horse carts, bicycles, rickshaws, semi trucks, pedestrians and motorbikes, all weaving around each other. The rule of Egyptian driving is to drive as fast as you can and then quickly hit the brakes if you are about to run into a barrier or another car. You changes lanes and weave around vehicles and obstacles as necessary to avoid changing speed. I really mean speed here, on our recent drive back to Cairo the car hit 115 mph at several points. Lets just say its a little nerve racking. The thing that the Egyptian road builders love the most is speed bumps. There are giant speed bumps everywhere, in neighborhoods, on highways. They can be anywhere at anytime, and they are not marked or painted, so you often don’t know that it is there till you hit it. I am sure it was one of these speed bumps that did in our tire on the way to the village.
 |  Sharing the Road |
Next thing we knew we were sitting in the car (while it was on jacks) as people worked on our tire. Several of the village children had followed us to the tire place and three boys on a donkey would do ride bys past the car, waving and tapping on the windows. We started measuring the birds in the car, because why not, and soon the tire was patched. We planned on heading back to catch more swallows but all of a sudden Badran and his friend came up to the car, the friend was holding 4 barn swallows in his hand and shoved them at me. One flew away, but I managed to grab the other three (a female and two fledglings). We had no idea what was going on, but next thing we knew we were headed back to Damietta. Basma informed us that there were two men in the village who had recently been in the prisons. They were standing around our car and were too interested in us so we had to leave for our own safety. We would not be allowed to come back to Rakabia again. We measured the two females and two fledglings from the night in the stairwell of Basma and Mamdough’s apartment in New Damietta.
We were unsure how we were going to get the last of our barn swallows, we were so close to our goal for the project, but if we could not go back to the Rakabia we would have to find more nests some place else. As luck would have it the next evening we got a call- Badran had 5 barn swallows in a box. He should really be considered a member of the field crew at this point. The box of barn swallows brought us up to 36.
We were unsure how we were going to get the last of our barn swallows, we were so close to our goal for the project, but if we could not go back to the Rakabia we would have to find more nests some place else. As luck would have it the next evening we got a call- Badran had 5 barn swallows in a box. He should really be considered a member of the field crew at this point. The box of barn swallows brought us up to 36.
 |  Donkey Ride By |
Box of Barn Swallows
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