While the human carnage continues in Iraq, particularly around the capital, there has recently been good news about our less violent cohabitants from the south of the country. A recent report by BirdLife International indicates that the recovery of the southern marshes, reported in previous columns, continues. Two summer and three winter surveys, carried out since 2003 and now published, indicate healthier than expected populations of birds — including six species assessed as Globally Threatened.

One of these is the Basra Reed-Warbler, endemic to southern Iraq as a breeding species (until recently its sole known habitat; it was recently discovered breeding in Israel). It is fairly large for a warbler, around 15 centimeters long, rather uniform brown above, paler below with a whitish throat and eye-stripe, long bill and dark rounded tail. Interestingly, there have been several unconfirmed records from Egypt of this migratory species, but beware of confusion with the larger and more rufous (reddish-brown) Great Reed Warbler.

Another Iraqi species doing well is the Iraqi Babbler. This bird has recently been shown to breed in Syria and for the first time, in 2006, in Turkey. Birds are great indicator species — their presence or absence from any area can tell you much about its environmental health. Thus, this is also good news for the Marsh Arabs, immortalized by the late Wilfred Thesiger in the book of the same name, who have lived in the region for more than five thousand years.

What I find most interesting about the news from these marshes is that they provide a possible glimpse of what the Nile Delta may have been like before its draining by humans over the millennia. The black and white photos from Thesiger’s book show vast, dense stands of reed and papyrus, labyrinthine channels winding through the maze of vegetation. The prose describes hunting expeditions in which the great man ‘bagged’ as many as 40 Wild Boar a day, much as scenes in the tombs of Mereruka and Idout at Saqqara portray ancient Egyptians hunting Hippos in the original Papyrus swamps of the Nile Delta.

Some of the species portrayed in these friezes are now extinct in the Middle East, with the sole exception of the Iraqi marshes. Among its other incarnations, the ancients venerated the god Thoth as an ibis, the Sacred Ibis to be precise. This species has long since disappeared from modern Egypt, the last record being in 1891 (though other sightings have been claimed recently). But the Sacred Ibis still breeds in Iraq’s wetlands as does the African Darter.

The African Darter looks like a greatly elongated cormorant with a long sinuous neck (that inspires its other name, Snakebird), ample graduated tail and a long, sharp bill with which it impales its fish prey. American readers may be familiar with its very similar Western counterpart, the Anhinga. The odd African Darter has reportedly turned up in the southern reaches of the Egyptian Nile over recent years, but it may have been more widespread in the past, as it is represented in a botanical frieze from Karnak and its remains have been found at several archeological sites. As a breeding species in the region today, it is restricted to Iraq’s southern marshes.

Two rare ducks have been reported in BirdLife International’s survey. One is the White-headed Duck, the male stocky, largely chestnut with a white face and nape and a black crown. The bill is bright blue, greatly swollen at the base. The female is largely brown, including the bill, but may be identified by the tail, frequently held cocked. Indeed, the genus Oxyura are often known as the stifftails. This enigmatic species disappeared from Egypt, where it used to winter, probably in the first half of the last century. With its numbers declining globally and its sensitivity to human disturbance, it is unlikely to come back.

The same may be the case with the Marbled Teal (or Marbled Duck). This duck is rather unusual in that the sexes are similar, both being pale dusky brown with delicate white spots, darker around the eyes. It used to breed in Egypt, but most recent texts conclude that it no longer does so.

But perhaps the most impressive denizen of Iraq’s recovering wetlands is the Wild Boar. Typically piglike in form, the Wild Boar has a narrow mobile snout, large well-furred ears, powerful forequarters and is covered with bristly, brown hair. The adult male may reach over 270 kilograms in weight and, with the upper canines curving round the outside of the snout as tusks, presents a fearsome prospect. This is the description of an encounter with one such boar quoted in Harrison and Bates’ Mammals of Arabia:

“With a rush and a snort he rounded the corner, bristles up and tusks clacking in pig-headed fury the only thing I remember was an impression of yellow ivory and the maddest-looking steam engine of a pig that ever was.”

Sadly, such drama will never be experienced in Egypt. The Wild Boar disappeared from here as a wild animal around 1900, its last refuge probably being Wadi El-Natroun. A lone animal clung on in Giza Zoo until the widely accepted date of December 20, 1912; with its passing, the species became extinct in this country.

The Wild Boar was probably abundant in ancient times as Paleolithic and Neolithic sites have turned up significant remains. By Predynastic times it appears, according to Patrick Houlihan in his The Animal World of the Pharaohs, to have been widely kept and possibly even worshipped as a “pig deity.” It is absent from the great hunting scenes of the Old Kingdom, indeed seemingly not pictured at all, possibly because of a dietary taboo.

However there is one intriguing relief from the tomb of Kagemni at Saqqara. In this scene, a man is depicted holding an animal’s snout to his mouth as though he is feeding it premasticated food, a technique practiced by a number of tribes-people to this day. When I first saw this depiction, I immediately labeled the young animal a piglet based on the thick neck and slender snout and the tail shape. Houlihan sees it as a puppy and with good reason, as he quite rightly points out that the creature has paws rather than trotters.

But there is another reason. A frieze from the much later tomb of Nebuman in Thebes shows a group of pigs in a clearly domestic context being driven, perhaps to market. There are two adults in the foreground (and a rather raunchy copulating couple in the background) with a single piglet — and the piglet is boldly striped. Wild Boar young and the young of the more primitive domesticated pig breeds are also boldly striped dark and pale, a detail unlikely to have been missed by the Old Kingdom artist.

I find it very depressing to be able to pinpoint the exact date of the extinction of the Egyptian Wild Boar to the demise of that unfortunate individual in Giza Zoo. Sadly, a further species has been added to the pantheon of the globally extinct with almost equal exactitude. On the other side of the world in China, the Yangtze Freshwater Dolphin Expedition returned to the port of Wuhan on December 13, 2006, to announce that, after surveying its last known habitats along the river, the Yangtze Freshwater Dolphin was “with all probability extinct.”

Also known as the Baiji, the species fell victim to the dramatic growth of human activity, pollution along the Yangtze River, dam projects and habitat destruction. Even being worshipped as a river goddess failed to save it. I visited the expedition website (www.baiji.org) where I could download recordings of the haunting underwater whistles of an animal that simply no longer exists. Given the news from Iraq, we have hope that the Basra Reed-Warbler has escaped this fate.  et