My instinct to cry should be obvious. There on the cover of the magazine was a stark portrait of a very dead slender-horned gazelle, its empty eye sockets filled by snail shells. The slender-horned gazelle is a very rare animal, listed by the IUCN as vulnerable and whose last stronghold was thought to be Egypt’s Western Desert. The hunters from this Gulf country came over and reportedly shot 42 of them.

And why? Look at virtually any of the Gulf states, with the possible exception of Oman: They have annihilated their own gazelle populations, so they hunt elsewhere.

So how could laughter possibly be generated by this? Don’t get me wrong. This is not open-jawed guffawing, but rather a saddened, ironic chuckle. My book, A Field Guide to the Mammals of Egypt, was reviewed in the same issue. The reviewer concluded with: “In many ways, this book stands as a sobering reminder of the importance and a joyous celebration of Egypt’s ecological diversity. Let us hope that it does not become a memorial.”

I am sure he does not yet have a grave, but if he did, he would be spinning in it. My book included distribution maps. For all the larger mammals, the ranges given were historical ranges so that the book could not be abused by hunters. I realize now that it was a futile gesture. Sadly, it seems, the hunters are always one step ahead of the conservationists. But when they are invited in from countries that have already all but annihilated their native wildlife, it just becomes insulting.

And the celebration? How could I possibly celebrate such carnage? The celebration is because this article was the cover story of Egypt’s leading English-language publication. It does matter. The slender-horned gazelle is every bit as important as the Giza Pyramids, as Saqqara, as Thebes and Karnak and all the other monuments, whether Pharaonic, Islamic or Coptic. Should tomb raiders from the Gulf descend on any of the above, the wrath of Zahi Hawass ably abetted by Discovery Channel would be wreaked upon them.

But there are positives. The white wagtails that have been wintering here in fairly somber grays and whites are now looking much smarter. The males, especially, now have clearly patterned black and white heads, clean cut and smart. They will be heading north to European breeding grounds though not to Britain. The white wagtails from Britain, called pied wagtails, have black rather than gray backs and do not pass through Egypt. But look not for the black and white, but for the harlequin.

To most urbanites, our birds are pretty dull. We have the house sparrow, which is brown-brown, the male with a black throat and the female with a pale eye stripe. We have the common bulbul, which has a beautiful voice but which is challenged color-wise. Its dull brown turns deeper dull brown on the head. And there is the palm dove that looks dull but is close to a beautiful rufous with pale slate wing patches.

Then in April come the bee-eaters even in Garden City you can have color. The European bee-eater is chestnut above, turquoise below, with a yellow throat and a black ‘bandit mask’ through the eyes. It is slim-line, with a sharp slightly down-curved bill and with the two central tail feathers elongated. It is beautiful, it is spectacular and in the bland, all-pervasive, urban smog of Cairo, it is utterly unexpected.

A couple of years back I received a call from my next door neighbors, terribly excited about this ‘bird of paradise’ they were seeing perched on the TV aerials on top of our building. It was April. Given that birds of paradise are pretty well limited to New Guinea and northern Australia, this seemed rather unlikely, but I grabbed the binoculars, strode onto the balcony and, sure enough, there were no birds of paradise. But there was a pair of European bee-eaters doing a fair impression they were stunning, and they tell you they’re coming. A soft ‘kruup, kruup’ fills the air and you look up to find flocks of these avian gems filling the sky.

While a very few European bee-eaters will stay here to breed in North Sinai, two other species of bee-eater are found here in summer. The blue-cheeked bee-eater comes here from southern Africa to breed. It is largely green with a striking black, blue and white facial pattern and an orange throat. There used to be a small colony at Abu Sir, but the authorities in their finite wisdom bulldozed the nest site. They can still be found at Gebel Asfar where they breed in burrows.

The little green bee-eater is smaller than the other two species and is resident in Egypt. It too is largely green, but smaller than the blue-cheeked one with a more subdued facial pattern and a black breast band. The race found on the Palestinian border has a bright blue throat.

To date, I have found no evidence of targeted trapping or killing of bee-eaters, unlike the hapless slender-horned gazelle. And I should not. On February 28, Sheikh Sayyed Tantawi, the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar called for kindness to animals and “enjoin[ed] believers to treat animals kindly as they benefit society.”

Anybody who has been privileged enough, to experience wild gazelles in Egypt’s deserts should appreciate the sheer grace of these animals. How do they benefit us? According to Tantawi, they benefit us by simply being there, a sentiment I totally agree with.