Travel: Wildlife near Cairo

We were staying in Saqqara, which gave us a break from Cairo air and traffic and easy access to some interesting areas. Just south of Saqqara are the marshes at Dahshur. The area has been taken over by the military and serves as a hunting preserve for them. It provides good habitat for a wide variety of wildlife, although by early December most of the thousands of ducks have moved south.

It was interesting to be walking around a place like this and see the Bent Pyramid and others on the horizon as part of the landscape. The Bent Pyramid was one of the earliest built and was an experiment. Originally the slope of the faces of the pyramid was about 54 degrees, but when it started to show signs of instability they shifted to 43 degrees, an angle they then frequently used.

East of Cairo, with the entrance on the edge of the city, was the Wadi Degla, a dry canyon with water only at a seep or two. The area reminded me of Big Bend National Park, or at least of their very driest canyons. There wasn't much in the way of wildlife, although we spotted a covey of sand partridge, a species of rare desert grouse rarely seen. The group of 15, gray with a white spot on the side of the head, moved slowly along the base of a cliff.

At the other extreme was Lake Qarun, on the eastern edge of the Western or Libyan Desert. At 45 miles below sea level, it serves as a resting place for thousands of waterfowl headed north or south. We saw a flock of 280 greater flamingos which had flown north after nesting in more southern parts of Africa. Development pressures are threatening the lake with potential problems of future water diversion, lakeshore development (of which there is already plenty) and water pollution issues.