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glittering in many colors.  That bird is to the Mongol the emblem of fidelity, for there are always a pair together and if one dies or gets shot the other one comes along and sits with the dead till he or she is dead too.

Then there are thousands of geese and swans on the lakes; nobody disturbs them there, that's why they come back during the mating season.  Mongolia is anyhow the sportsman's paradise, but a bit difficult to get at.  Of course there are also eagles, hawks, crows and puckblack ravens.  These all feed on carrion.  On a quiet, sunny day you can see them sailing away in the air, hundreds of feet high, looking for food.  It's quite an amusing picture to watch the dogs and the crows and raven feeding together on the carcass of some dead camel.  The dogs try to chase the birds away but they only move a few steps and as soon as the dog is not looking, they hop back to feed.  Bye the way, a camel looks a very big animal, but when it's dead you find that there is really very little meat on it.  The bulk of the animal consists of different parts of stomach and when the camel falls to pieces, it is mostly a heap of more or less digested grass.

The funniest bird in Mongolia is a pitch black bird with a bright yellow beak, the size of a small crow.  It lives on insects, grasshoppers etc., and it can be found near to all monastries, where it shelters under the overhanging roofs.  As soon as there is a little bit of dawn, the darned things start screeching so srilly, that it is impossible to sleep anywhere in the neighbourhood.  Living, as I did in the monastries when travelling in the country, we tried nearly every means to scare away the birds, shying empty tins or stones, at them, but it's hopeless.  You may just as well get up at dawn, for sleeping is out of ^[[the]] question anyhow.  In the Gobi there are san^[[d]]mice and little lizards, which seem to be able to exist without any water.  You have to be careful if you want to catch a lizard, for they bite and must be poisonous, for the hand swells up if you are bitten by one.  In Northern Mongolia there are some pretty little animals, small rats