Bird-watching on King's Island Luxor (And Dealing with Egyptians IV)

The hotel's island is actually a very good site for bird spotting as it is surrounded by marshy land. Therefore it is a very fine place for water birds, especially heron, which are an ideal bird for a gross amateur (like me) since they tend to be large and stay very still.

The hotel advertised that it ran a bird safari (at extra charge), so up I got at dawn and this guide took me around. The guide asked me if "I was here with Madam". As if a man who is getting up at 5:30am on holiday to stare at herons is going to have a spouse....

Bags of little egrets. (I don't think "bag" is the correct collective noun). They were even common on the lawns in the hotel grounds.

Laughing doves. Similarly common

I think these are Egyptian Swallows rather than common ones.

Laughing Dove up close

I think this is  a Spur-Winged Plover

Grey Herons are a common sight, even around the Thames. But more unusual to see one up a Palm Tree

On our walk around the island we came across a few of what were the farmers houses before the hotel was built. They are no longer inhabited but are still used by farmers for their livestock

Crested Lark. A rather small and mobile bird to be able to capture with a point and push camera, but voila

Hooded Crow. Very common here

I think a Masked Shrike

Hoopoes are everywhere around the hotel, but they don't let you get very close

Farmers still use these areas beneath the hotel that are prone to flooding to graze cattle

Egyptian Swallows

Pair of Laughing Doves, or alternatively and more properly Palm Doves, aptly in a palm tree

Squacco Heron

Night heron in foreground, Squacco Heron in background

Squacco Herons

This gives you an idea of the sheer density of feeding herons. Not a good place to be a small vertebrate

Squacco Heron in front, Grey behind

Purple Gallinule

My best image of a Hoopoe. Come on, one couldn't get much better

I believe a Little Green Bee-Eater

Little Green Bee-eater, identified as such by my guide

Dealing with Egyptians IV

So, my guide. Well he certainly knew his birds. As I said there was a charge for this. 50 Egyptian pounds. I tried to pay at the hotel when I booked it, but they didn't have any change. So I handed him over 100 Egyptian pounds. He made no effort to offer me change. I was perfectly happy for him to take the rest as a tip, but would have liked to have been given the option. But this is Egypt.

As it happens, he also offered more in the way of bird-guiding and general guiding services. He had his own taxi. Now if I were doing this, I would have impressed my guest with my conversational English (having guided English tourists for nearly twenty years as he explained) and how good a bird watching experience he could give, and then at the end offered his services more widely. And if he done so, I would have used him again and, given what I wanted to do, he would have received more than a thousand Egyptian pounds of work. But instead of concentrating on giving me a good experience at what he was charging me for, he spent most of the time trying to sell me the other experiences he could offer. All in a very difficult to understand accent, so that I really caught at best one in two sentences. A whole day trying to understand what he was telling me could have been tough going.

I might still have employed him again, had he not overcharged me. So the good news from his viewpoint was he got 50 pounds more than the listed price, and the bad news that he lost out on over a 1000 pounds in doing so. This tells you everything you need to know about why they are such a poor people, and why there are so few tourists compared to the vast potential. If only one of them was honest they would make a killing.