Four lynxes—two males, 30¼ and 31 lbs.; two females, 18½ and 23 lbs.—representing both types, namely, (1) that with many small spots, and (2) the handsomer form with fewer large and conspicuous blotches.
One wild-cat (an exceptional specimen)—a male of 15 lbs., with yellow irides instead of the usual cold, cruel, pale-green eyes like an unripe gooseberry. This cat was what the Spanish keepers describe as rayado = banded, i.e. the spots are arrayed in regular series or interrupted bands rather than scattered promiscuously. This race is distinguished as gato clavo, the ordinary wild-cat being known as gato romano.
Several other wild-cats (Gatos romanos)—males weighing from 10¾ to 12½ lbs.; females weighing from 7½ to 8¼ lbs.
In the sierras wild-cats run heavier than this, for we have killed in Moréna a wild-cat that scaled 7¾ kilos, or upwards of 17 lbs.
Two badgers—male, 17½ lbs.; female, 14½ lbs. These Spanish badgers are blacker in the legs than British examples, and their fore-claws are more powerfully developed, possibly in this case through living in sand. Really big males weigh nearly double the above.
Ten foxes (Vulpes melanogaster)—six males weighing 13¾ , 14, 15 16½ , 16½ , 17 lbs.; four females weighing 11, 11¾ , 13½ , 14 lbs.
Besides “small deer,” such as rats and mice, voles, moles, and dormice, to say nothing of a whole red-stag and a whole wild-boar!
[Postscript]
March 2, 1907.—Chillando this evening at the Oyillos del Tio Juan Roque, a big grey sow with numerous progeny came trotting up to within a few yards—whether to devour the supposed rabbit or merely from curiosity was not apparent. On realising the situation, she turned and dashed off with an indignant snort, followed by her striped brood, but did not go far before stopping (like Lot’s wife) to listen and look back.
Later, at the Sabinal, just upon dusk, a fox appeared about 120 yards away, down-wind. Though quite aware of our presence, both by scent and sight, he deliberately sat down on his haunches to watch; but no charm of the chillar would induce a nearer approach, and a rifle-ball whistling within an inch or two of his ears broke the spell.
On May 16, 1910, a mongoose responded with unusual alacrity to the first “call,” running up within twenty yards. This was an adult male and weighed 8½ lbs.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
We have endeavoured to rear some of these animals in captivity. The young wild-cats are by far the most intractable—perfect fiends of savage fury, quite unamenable to civilisation. The lynx at least affects a measure of subjection, but remains always unreliable and treacherous in spirit. The story of how one of our tame lynxes attacked and nearly killed a poor lavandera is told in Wild Spain, p. 447.
I. San Cristobal and the Pinsápo Region
THIS mountain-system may be regarded as an outlying eastern extension of the Sierra Neváda. Except at the “Ultimo Suspiro del Moro” there is no actual break, and both in physical features and in fauna the two ranges coincide, while differing essentially from the Sierra Moréna, their immediate neighbour on the north. The Serranía de Ronda, nevertheless, displays distinctive characters which entitle it to a place in this book; it forms, moreover, our “Home-mountains,” lying within a thirty-mile ride eastward of Jerez.
The outstanding feature is the massif—or, in Spanish, Nucléo Central—of San Cristobal, which rises to 5800 feet, and stands head and shoulders above its surrounding satellites, an imposing pile of cold grey rock and perpendicular precipice.[57]
Nestling beneath its western bastions lies the Moorish hamlet of Benamahoma, whence, housed in friendly quarters, we have oft explored this hill. The route to the summit (which may almost be reached on donkey-back) is by the southern face; for summits, however, merely as such, we have no sort of affection, and never expend one ounce of energy in gaining them, unless they chance to aid a main objective. As to “views,” we are sure to enjoy these from other points quite as effective.
New-fallen snow powdered the ground and mantled the surrounding peaks as we rode out of Benamahoma on March 20. But the sun shone bright, and from a poplar softly warbled a rock-bunting—with pearl-grey head, triple banded. Serins and kitty-wrens sang from the wooded slopes, and we observed long-tailed tits, with cirl-buntings and woodlarks. A grey wagtail by the burnside was already acquiring the black throat of spring.
The tortuous track writhes upwards through sporadic cultivation—the angles at which these hill-men can work a plough amaze, beans and garbanzos grow on slopes where no ordinary biped could maintain a foothold. The industry of mountaineers (here as elsewhere in Spain) is remarkable. Each tillable patch, however small or abrupt, is reduced to service, its million stones removed and utilised to form the foundation for a tiny era, or threshing-floor (like a shelf on the hillside), whereon the hard-won crop is threshed with flails. Higher out on the hills rude stone sheilings are erected to serve as shelters during seed-time and harvest. Not even the hardy Norseman puts up a tougher tussle with nature to wrest her fruits from the earth.
Presently one enters forests of oak and ilex with strange misshapen trunks, stunted and hollow, but decorated with prehensile convolvulus and mistletoe—many three-fourths dead, mere shells with cavernous interior, sheltering tufts of ferns. Here, instead of destroying the whole tree, charcoal-burners pollard and lop; huge lateral limbs are amputated as they grow, and the result, during centuries, produces these monstrosities, rarely exceeding twenty feet in height and surmounted by a delicate superstructure of branches totally disproportionate. No more fantastic forms can be conceived than these bloated boles, wrestling, as it were, with death, yet still able to transmit life to the superstruction above. They recall the Baobab trees of Central Africa. In neither case is the effect absolutely displeasing, albeit grotesque. Both may be described as deformed rather than disfigured.
On rounding the northern shoulder of the mountain, suddenly the whole scene changes. Instead of limb-lopped trunks, one is faced by the dark foliage of the pinsápo pine—a forest monarch whose stately growth strikes one’s eye as something conspicuously new. And new indeed it is. For the range of this great Spanish pine (Abies pinsapo) is limited not merely to Spain, but actually to this one mountain-range, the Serranía de Ronda—there may exist more remarkable examples of a restricted distribution, but none certainly that we have come across. The pinsápo, moreover, affects even here but three spots: first, San Cristobal itself; secondly, the Sierra de las Nieves, a mountain plainly visible some thirty miles to the eastward (all its northern corries darkened by pinsápos); and, lastly, the Sierra Bermeja on the Mediterranean, distant thirty to thirty-five miles S.S.E. On each of the three the pinsápo grows in forests; on adjacent hills we have observed one or two scattered groups—otherwise this pine is found nowhere else on earth.
A curious character of the pinsápo is that it only grows on the northern faces of the hills.
The tree possesses remarkable personality. Though one sees a chance specimen grow up straight as a spruce, yet its normal tendency is to “flatten out” on top, whence three, four, even a dozen independent “leaders” spring away, each with equal vigour, and finally form as many distinct vertical trunks, say six or eight separate pines all arising from a common base.
To see the pinsápo in its pristine majesty and massiveness, one must ascend beyond the range of charcoal-burners; up there flourish gigantic specimens, some of which we measured (by rough pacing) to encompass ten to fifteen yards of base. These trees grow from screes of broken rock—great blocks of white dolomite; but the deep-searching tap-roots penetrate to black alluvia beneath. Other huge pines found roothold in walls of living rock. The three sketches, made from individual trees (presumed for the purpose to be divested of foliage), illustrate the singular multiple growth described.
The foliage of the pinsápo differs from ordinary pine-needles, being rather a series of stiff outstanding spines analogous to those of the Araucaria. They display a crimson efflorescence in March, developing into clusters of red cones by April, and ripening in August to September.[58]
PINSÁPO PINES (Abies pinsapo) Diagram to show trunk-plan, divested of foliage. Girth at base 30 to 45 feet.
PINSÁPO PINES (Abies pinsapo)
Diagram to show trunk-plan, divested of foliage. Girth at base 30 to 45
feet.
The pinsápo-forests are subject to terrible destruction alike by hatchet and fire, tempest and avalanche. Forest-fires sweep whole glens; while rock-slides overwhelm and uproot even the biggest trees by scores. Few scenes that we have witnessed are more eloquent of nature’s violence than these traces of an avalanche. Mammoth skeletons, weird and weather-blanched, protrude by the hundred from chaotic rock-ruin—some still upright, others overthrown or half submerged in debris, yet stretching great white arms heavenward, as though in agonised appeal. The distant roar of an avalanche is a not infrequent sound throughout the mountain-land.
The pinsápo-forests of San Cristobal present one of the most striking mountain-landscapes in Andalucia. For some three miles they cover in a semicircle the whole scooped-out amphitheatre of the mountain-side. Their dark-green masses, contrasted against the white rocks on which they grow—and in winter with yet whiter snow—cluster upwards, tier above tier, from below the 3000-feet level away to the extreme summit of the knife-edged ridge above, say 5500 feet. Would that we could depict the beauty of the scene.
CROSSBILL Wrestling with pine-cone.
CROSSBILL
Wrestling with pine-cone.
Through these dark forests a track winds, and here again the evident industry of the mountaineers surprised. At intervals along this pathway lay great baulks of pine-timber (sleepers, planks, and poles), dressed and piled ready for transport. That such loads could be carried hence on donkey-back, or, were such possible, that the labour could be repaid, appeared incredible—so distant are markets and so heavy the cargo.[59]
We had hoped to find in these forests a home of the Spanish crossbill, but not a sign of it rewarded our search. To avail the ripe fruit, the crossbill would need to nest in autumn, and that (wide as is the latitude of its breeding-season) is too much even for the Pico-tuerto. An interesting species found here in March was the cole-tit (Parus pinsapinensis?), which climbed around us, swinging from twigs within a yard as we sat at lunch. Blackstarts abounded, also firecrests. The latter have a pretty habit of engaging in aërial struggle—whether for love or war—both falling locked together to earth, as blue-tits do. On one such occasion a male, ere taking wing, spread out his flaming crown fanlike, as it were a halo.
Beyond the pinsápo-forests succeeds a region of wiry esparto-grass, up which we climbed to yet more sterile zones above. Here cruel rocks are adorned with a dwarf sword-broom, steel-tipped, a thorny berberis, and vicious pin-cushion gorse that protects its newer growths (not that there is anything tender about it at any stage) by a delicate grey tracery that deceives a careless eye. For that subtle tracery is, in fact, the indurated malice of last year’s spikey armour. No handhold does nature here vouchsafe.
Curiously, we noticed woodlarks up here, while blackstarts abounded as titlarks on a Northumbrian moor. In an ivy-clad gorge at 4200 feet we found two nearly completed nests in rock crevices: one occupied a vertical fissure that needed quite twelve inches of packed moss to provide a foundation, the cup-shaped nest being superimposed. But it was not till a month later (April 24) that these birds were laying in earnest.
At 5000 feet the “Piorno” (Spartius scorpius) began to grow, a red-stemmed shrub, known locally as Leche-interna, and on breaking it, the twigs are found to be filled with a milky fluid that justifies the name. The piorno we have never found growing except on the high tops of Grédos and other lofty sierras, where it forms a chief food of the Spanish ibex, its presence being, in fact, always associated with that of the wild-goat. Alas! that here, on San Cristobal, that association has been severed—another instance of the heedless improvidence that marks the Spanish race. Fifteen years ago they destroyed the last ibex; fifteen years hence they will have destroyed the last pinsápo!
Once for brief moments a broad-horned head, peering over the topmost crags, lent joyous hope that after all an ibex or two might yet survive. But the intruder proved to be one of the dark-brown rams of Ovis bidens that, in semi-feral state, roam these peaks.
San Cristobal itself now holds no big game; though ibex are found but a few leagues to the eastward, and, we rejoice to add (on certain sierras where protection is afforded them), begin to increase. The Serranía de Ronda, like Neváda, of which it is an extension, has never held either boar or deer; both are too rocky and precipitous to shelter those animals, though both boar and roe are found in the lower hills towards Jerez.
Just below the highest peak, the Cumbre de San Cristobal, lies a curious little alpine meadow. It is only forty yards square, and while we rested, lunching, on unaccustomed level a golden eagle swept overhead, chased and hustled by a mob of choughs that colonise these crags. Ten minutes later a lammergeyer afforded a second glorious spectacle, speeding through space on pinions rigidly motionless, but strongly reflexed, as is usual on a descending gradient. Only once, as far as eye could follow, was one great wing gently deflected, and that merely from the “wrist.”
On reaching a crest above, two lammergeyers appeared, the first carrying a long stick or thin bone athwart his beak; the second held a course direct to where L. sat on the ridge, coming so near that the rustle of huge wings sounded menacingly and the white head, golden breast, and hoary shoulders showed clear as in a picture. We expected to find the eyrie somewhere hard by, but in this we were mistaken—once more. It was not on that hill, nor the next; but on a third![60]
We discovered the nest of our friends, the golden eagles. It was situate quite two miles away, in a vertical pulpit-shaped rock-stack, that stood forth in a terribly steep scree. From a cavern in the face of this (prettily overhung by a clump of red-berried mistletoe) flew the male eagle. From below, the eyrie was accessible to within a dozen feet; but that interval proved impassable. In the evening we returned with the rope, and having made this fast above, L. was about to ascend from below, when the man left in charge at the top (probably misunderstanding his instructions) let all go, and down came the rope clattering at our feet! It was too late to rectify the blunder that night, and a month elapsed ere we would revisit the spot. Then this curious result ensued. The eagles, we found, had so bitterly resented the indignity of a rope having been (even momentarily) stretched athwart their portals that they had abandoned their stronghold, leaving two handsome eggs, partly incubated. Their eyrie was eight feet deep, its entrance partly overgrown with ivy and (as above mentioned) overhung by red-berried mistletoe growing on a wild-cherry—the nest built of sticks, lined with esparto, and adorned with green ivy-leaves and twigs of pinsápo.
GOLDEN EAGLE HUNTING (1) The “stoop”—quite vertical. (2) “Got him.”
GOLDEN EAGLE HUNTING
(1) The “stoop”—quite vertical. (2) “Got him.”
The golden eagle is still common, ornamenting with majestic flight every sierra in Spain. For eagles are notoriously difficult to kill, and, when killed, cannot be eaten; so the goat-herd, with characteristic apathy and Arab fatalism, suffers the ravages on his kids and contents himself with an oath. Only once have we found a nest in a tree; it was a giant oak, impending a ravine so precipitous that from the eyrie you could drop a pebble into a torrent 200 feet below. Usually their nests are in the crags, vast accumulations of sticks conspicuously projecting, and generally in pairs, perhaps 100 yards apart, and which are occupied in alternate years. Eggs are laid by mid-March, but the young hardly fly before June. It was in this sierra that we made the sketches of golden eagles from life, here and at p. 317.
Bonelli’s eagle is another beautiful mountain-haunting species, but of it we treat elsewhere.
From the knife-edged ridge above our eagle’s eyrie (height 5500 feet) we enjoyed a memorable view. Due south, 50 miles away, beyond the jumbled Spanish sierras, lay Gibraltar, recognisable by its broken back, but looking puny and inconsiderable amidst vaster heights. Beyond it—beyond Tetuan, in fact—rose Mount Anna, an 8000-feet African mountain; to the right, Gebel-Musa and all the Moorish coast to Cape Spartel, the straits between showing dim and insignificant. To the eastward, beyond the Sierra de las Nieves aforesaid, stands out boldly the long white snow-line of Neváda, its majesty undimmed by distance and 140 miles of intervening atmosphere. To the west we distinguish Jerez, 40 miles away, and beyond it the shining Atlantic.
From one point there lies almost perpendicularly below, the curious mediæval village of Grazalema, jammed in between two vast cinder-grey rock-faces—its narrow streets, white houses, and india-red roofs resembling nothing so much as a toy town. No space for “back-streets,” each house faces both ways; yet Grazalema is one of the cleanest spots we have struck—how they manage that, we know not.
Immediately beneath Grazalema is a bird-crag that contains a regular “choughery,” hundreds of these red-billed corvines nesting in its caves and crevices. As neighbours they had lesser kestrels and rock-sparrows (Petronia stulta), while the roofs of the caverns were plastered with the mud nests of crag-martins. We also noticed here alpine swifts, and a great frilled lizard escaped us amid broken rocks.
Within the limits of a chapter even the more notable spots of a great serranía cannot all find place; but the rock-gorge known as the Yna de la Garganta will not be overpassed, though no words of ours can convey the stupendous nature of this place, a chasm riven right through the earth’s crust till its depths are invisible from above; and overshadowed by encircling walls of sheer red crags, broken horizontally at intervals, thus forming, as it were, tier above tier, and flanked by a series of bastions and flying buttresses apparently provided to support the vast superstructure above.
By climbing along the rugged central tier, one overlooks from its apex, as from the reserved seats of a dress-circle, the whole domestic economy of a vulture city in being. Every ledge in that abyss was crowded; many vultures sat brooding, their heads laid flat on the rock or tucked under the point of a wing. Elsewhere a single grey-white chick, or a huge white egg, lay in full view on the open ledge, nestled, apparently, on bare earth; and behind these each niche or cavern had its tenant. The rocks around a nest were often stained blood-red, and one vulture arrived carrying a mass of what appeared carrion in its claws. Another brought a wisp of dry esparto-grass athwart her beak and deposited it in her nest.[61]
While we watched this scene a smart thunderstorm passed over, with the result that shortly afterwards the vultures spread their huge wings to dry, displaying attitudes some of which we endeavour to sketch—see also p. 9.
The descent into the unseen depths beneath was rewarded, despite a terrible scramble—part of the way on a rope—by discovering a fairy grotto filled with pink, azure, and opalescent stalactites and stalagmites. The bed of the canyon, which from above had appeared to be paved with sand, now proved to consist of boulders ten feet high. After threading a devious course through these for half-a-mile we reached the mouth of the grotto. Its width would be nearly 200 feet and height about half that, the form roughly resembling the quarter of a cocoa-nut. The dome, in delicate colouring, passes description—the apex bright salmon-pink, changing, as it passed inwards, first into clear emerald, then to dark green, and finally to indigo; while the reflected sunlight filtering down between the rock-walls of the canyon caused phantasmagoric effects such as, one thought, existed only in fairyland. The cavern was backed by pillars of stalactites resembling the pipes of a mighty organ, and of so soft and feathery a texture that it was surprising, on touching them, to find hard rock. The floor also was composed of great smooth stalagmites, deep brown in colour.
From outside, one saw the sky as through a narrow rift between the perpendicular walls which towered up 300 feet; and above that level there again uprose the vultures’ cliffs already described.
One evening we detected afar a cavern which showed signs of being the present abode of a lammergeyer. Ere reaching it, however, a keen eye descried one of these birds in the heavens at an altitude that dwarfed the great Gypaëtus to the size of a humble kestrel. Presently, after many descending sweeps, the lammergeyer entered another cavern 2000 feet higher up—in fact, close under the sky-line, among some scanty pinsápos. The hour was 4 P.M., and after a long day’s scramble, the writer shied at a fresh ascent. Not so my companion, L., who set off at a run, and within an hour had reached the eyrie. It proved empty, though the leg of a freshly killed kid lay half across the nest. This was presumably the alternative site, used, this year, merely as a larder; but time did not that night admit of further search.
The writer beguiled the two-hours interval in interviewing a wild gipsy-eyed girl of twelve, whose name was Joséfa Aguilár, and whose vocation in life to attend a herd of swine. Throughout Spain, whether on mountain or plain, one sees this thing—a small boy or girl spending the livelong day in solitary charge of dumb beasts, goats or pigs, even turkeys—and the sight ever causes me a pang of regret. Probably I am quite wrong, but such hardly seems a human vocation—certainly it leads nowhere. In intervals of pelting her recalcitrant charges with stones, Joséfa told me she lived in a reed-hut which was close by, but so small that I had overlooked its existence; that she never went to school or had been farther from home than Zahara, a village some few miles away. She asked if I was from Grazalema, and on being told from England, she repeated the word “Inglaterra” again and again, while her bright black eyes became almost sessile with wonderment. Joséfa’s frock was hanging in tatters, torn to bits by the thorny scrub. I gave her some coppers to buy a new one, and with a little joyous scream Joséfa vanished among the bush.
LAMMERGEYER ENTERING EYRIE
LAMMERGEYER ENTERING EYRIE
Darkness was closing in ere L. returned; then great thunder-clouds rolled up, obscuring the moon, and oh! what we suffered those next three hours, scrambling over rock and ridge, through forest and thicket—all in inky darkness and under a deluge of rain.
On returning to this remote ridge (having ascended from the opposite face), we soon renewed our friendship with the lammergeyer—when first seen, it was being mobbed by an impudent chough. Then it sailed up the deep gorge below us, passing close in front, and after clearing an angle of the hill, wheeled inwards and with gently closing wings plunged into a cavern in the crag. We felt we had our object assured; yet on examining these mighty piles of rocks—a couple of hours’ stiff climbing—it was evident we were mistaken, for no nest, past or present, did they reveal. It was on yet a third stupendous crag, quite a mile from the alternative site first discovered, that this year these lammergeyers had fixed their home. The nest was in quite a small cave in the rock-face; more often (as described in Wild Spain) the lammergeyer prefers a huge cavern in the centre of which is piled an immense mass of sticks, heather-stalks, and other rubbish—the accumulation of years—and lined with esparto-grass and wool. The eggs always number two and are richly coloured, whereas the griffon lays but one, and that white. Although laying takes place as early as January, yet the young are unable to fly before June. Our principal object this year was to sketch the lammergeyer in life, and in this several rough portraits serve to show that we succeeded—so far as in us lies.
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There remain notes of later vernal developments in these beautiful sierras; but alas! this chapter is already too long, so over the taffrail they go.
II. THE SIERRA BERMEJA
THE Sierra Bermeja, standing on Mediterranean shore, demands a page or two if only because it affords a home to three of Spain’s peculiar and rarer guests—the pinsápo, the ibex, and the lammergeyer.
Our earlier experience in Bermeja, our efforts to study its ibex—and to secure a specimen or two—are told in Wild Spain. Suffice it here to say that the characteristic of these Mediterranean mountains is that here the ibex habitually live, and even lie-up (as hares do), among the scrubby brushwood of the hills—a remarkable deviation from their observed habits elsewhere, whether in Spain, the Caucasus and Himalayas, or wherever ibex are found. But since brushwood clothes Bermeja and other Mediterranean hills to their topmost heights, the local wild-goats have literally no choice in the matter. Still, such a habitat must strike a hunter’s eye as abnormal, and is, in fact, a curious instance of “adaptation to environment.”[62]
During December 1907 we spent some days in Bermeja in an attempt to stalk the ibex—a difficult undertaking when game is always three-parts hidden by scrub. On former occasions we had secured a specimen or two by stalking (here called raspagéo) and “driving”; but whatever chance there might have been was this time annihilated by incessant mists enshrouding the heights in opaque screen. Thus another carefully organised expedition and unstinted labour were once more thrown away!
LAMMERGEYER [Drawn from life in Sierra Bermeja, March 1891.
LAMMERGEYER
[Drawn from life in Sierra Bermeja, March 1891.]
On December 19 we drove the “Pinsapal.” This, commencing near the highest tops, 5000 feet, extends down a tremendous conch-shaped ravine, merging at the base into pine-forests—chiefly, we believe, Pinus pinaster. This “drive” lasted two hours, mist sometimes densely thick, at others clearing a little; but only allowing a view varying from twenty to eighty yards. This, coupled with constant drip from the gigantic pinsápos and a bitter wind blowing through clothes already soaked, was ... well, comfortless and pretty hopeless to boot. Twice the dogs gave tongue—and it could be nothing but ibex here; while D., who was posted on the left, heard the rattling of hoofs as a herd passed within, as he reckoned, 200 yards. A second lot, followed by dogs, was heard though not seen on the extreme right. The pinsápos at this season, and in such weather, form a favourite resort, for we saw more sign hereabouts than on the high tops. A levante wind in winter always means mist—and failure.
The ibex in winter hold the high ground unless driven down by snow. In spring and summer they come lower—even to cork-oak levels—presumably to avoid contact with tame goats, then pasturing on the tops.
The east wind and fog continuing a whole week, though we tried all we knew, every effort was frustrated by atmospheric obstruction. To drive ibex successfully, the skilled training of the dogs is essential. Formerly there were goat-herds who possessed clever dogs of great local repute. But these days of “free-shooting” have passed away, and the ibex of Bermeja with those of other Spanish sierras have recently fallen under the beneficent ægis of “protection.”
Bird-life in winter is scarce. We noticed a few redwings feeding on berries; jays, partridges, and many wood-pigeons picking up acorns. Vultures rarely appear here, but both golden and Bonelli’s eagles were observed, and in one mountain-gorge a pair of lammergeyers have their stronghold, where in 1891 we examined both their eyries, one containing a young Gypaëtus as big as a turkey. That was in March, at which season hawfinches abounded in the pines, and at dawn the melody of the blue thrush recalled Scandinavian springs and the redwing’s song. Another small bird caused recurrent annoyance while ibex-driving. With a loud “Rat, tat, tat,” resembling the patter of horny hoofs on rock, its song commences; then follows a hissing note as of a heavy body passing through brushwood—for an instant one expects the coveted game to appear. No, confound that bird! it’s only a blackstart.
We extract the following scene from Wild Spain:—
On the lifting of a cloud-bank which rested on the mountain-side, I descried four ibex standing on a projecting rock in bold relief about 400 yards away. The intervening ground was rugged—rocks and brush-wood with scattered pines—and except the first 50 yards, the stalk offered no difficulty. I had passed the dangerous bit, and was already within 200 yards, when in a moment the wet mist settled down again and I saw the game no more. Curiously, on the fog first lifting, an eagle sat all bedraggled and woe-begone on a rock-point hard by, his feathers fluffed out and a great yellow talon protruding, as it seemed, from the centre of his chest. Then a faint sun-ray played on his bronzed plumage: he shook himself and launched forth in air, sweeping downwards—luckily without moving the ibex, though they took note of the circumstance.
In the lower forests here are some pig and roe-deer. A far greater stronghold, however, for both these game-animals is at Almoraima, belonging to the Duke of Medinaceli, some six or eight leagues to the westward. Almoraima covers a vast extent of wild mountainous land of no great elevations generally, but all wooded and jungle-clad. On the lower levels grow immense cork-forests. Here, during a series of monterías in February 1910, in which the writer, to his lasting regret, was prevented from taking part, a total of 19 roe-deer and 52 boars was secured. The two best roebuck heads measured as follows:—
| Length (outside curve). | Circumference. | Tip to Tip. | |
| No. 1 | 9½” | 3½” | 3⅝” |
| No. 2 | 9¼” | 4⅜” | 3” |
III. Sierra de Jerez
These mountains (being within sight of our home) formed the scene of our earliest sporting ventures in Spain. It is forty years ago now, yet do we not forget that first day and its anxieties, as we rode by crevices that serve for bridle-paths, along with a too jovial hill-farmer, Barréa by name, who persisted in carrying a loaded gun swinging haphazard and full-cock in the saddle-slings—that it was loaded we saw by the shiny copper cap on each nipple! Our objects that day were boar and roe-deer; but presently a partridge was descried sprinting up the rugged screes above. Out came the ready gun, and next moment all that remained of that partridge was a cloud of feathers and scattered anatomy. The ball had gone true. Barréa casually shouted to a lad to pick up the pieces, himself riding on as though such practice was an everyday affair. My own experience of ball-shooting being then limited, I reflected that if such were Spanish marksmanship, I might be left behind! On assembling for lunch, however, some vultures were wheeling high overhead, and it occurred to me to try my luck. By precisely a similar fluke, one huge griffon collapsed to the shot, and swirling round and round like a parachute, occupied (it seemed) five minutes in reaching the ground—1000 feet below us.
That afternoon the antics of two strange beasties attracted my attention and again my ball went straight. The victim was a mongoose, and with some pride I had the specimen carefully stowed in the mule-panniers—never to see it more! The mongoose, we now know, owing to its habit of eating snakes, has acquired a personal aroma surpassing in pungency that of any other beast of the field, and our men, so soon as my back was turned, had discreetly thrown out the malodorous trophy.
A boar-shooting trip to the Sierra de Jerez formed the first sporting venture in which the authors were jointly engaged; for which reason (though the memory dates back to March 1872) we may be forgiven for extracting a brief summary from Wild Spain:—
Our quarters were a little white rancho perched amid deep bush and oak-woods on the slope of the Sierra del Valle. A mile farther up the valley was closed by the dark transverse mass of the Sierra de las Cabras, the two ranges being separated by an abrupt chasm called the Boca de la Foz, which was to be the scene of this day’s operations.
A pitiable episode occurred. While preparing to mount, there resounded from behind a peal of strange inhuman laughter, followed by incoherent words; and through an iron-barred window we discerned the emaciated figure of a man, wild and unkempt, whose eagle-like claws grasped the barriers of his cell—a poor lunatic. No connected replies could we get, nothing beyond vacuous laughter and gibbering chatter. Now he was at the theatre and quoted magic jargon; anon supplicating the mercy of a judge; then singing a stanza of some old song, to break off abruptly into fierce denunciation of one of us as the cause of his troubles. Poor wretch! he had once been a successful advocate; but signs of madness having developed, which increased with years, the once popular lawyer was reduced to the durance of this iron-girt cell, his only share and view of God’s earth just so much of sombre everlasting sierra as the narrow opening allowed. We were warned that any effort to ameliorate his lot was hopeless, his case being desperate. What hidden wrongs may exist in a land where no judicial intervention is obligatory between the “rights of families” and their insane relations (or those whom they may consider such) are easy to conceive.
The first covert tried was a strong jungle flanking the main gorge, but this and a second beat proved blank, though two roebuck broke back. The third drive comprised the main manchas, or thickets, of the Boca de la Foz, and to this we ascended on foot, leaving the horses picketed behind. Our four guns occupied the rim of a natural amphitheatre which dipped sharply away some 1500 feet beneath us, the centre choked with brushwood—lentisk, arbutus, and thorn—20 feet deep. On our left towered a perpendicular block of limestone cliffs, the right flank of the jungle being bordered by a series of up-tilted rock-strata, white as marble and resembling a ruined street.
Ten minutes of profound silence, not a sound save the distant tinkle of a goat-bell, or the song of that feathered recluse, the blue rock-thrush (in Spanish, Solitario), then the distant cries of the beaters in the depths below told us the fray had begun.
Another ten minutes’ suspense. Then a crash of hound-music proclaimed that the quarry was at home. This boar proved to be one of certain grizzly monsters of which we were specially in search, his lair a jumble of boulders islanded amid thickest jungle. Here he held his ground, declining to recognise in canine aggressors a superior force. Two boar-hounds reinforced the skirmishers of the pack, yet the old tusker stood firm. For minutes that seemed like hours the conflict raged stationary: the sonorous baying of the boar-hounds, the “yapping” of the smaller dogs, and shouts of mountaineers blended with the howl of an incautious podenco as he received a death-rip—all formed a chorus of sounds that carried their exciting story to the sentinel guns above.
The seat of war being near half-a-mile away, no immediate issue was expected. Then there occurred one crash of bush, and a second boar dashed straight for the pass where the writer barred the way. The suddenness of the encounter disconcerted, and the first shot missed—the bullet splashing on a grey rock just above—time barely remained to jump aside and avoid collision. The left barrel got home: a stumble and a savage grunt as an ounce of lead penetrated his vitals, and the boar plunged headlong, his life-blood dyeing the weather-blanched rocks and green palmetto. For a moment he lay, but ere cold steel could administer a quietus, he had regained his feet and dashed back. Whether revenge prompted that move or it was merely an effort to regain the covert he had just left, we know not—a third bullet laid him lifeless.
During this interlude (though it only occupied five seconds) the main combat below reached its climax. The old boar had left his stronghold, and after sundry sullen stands and promiscuous skirmishes (during which a second podenco died), he made for the heights. Showing first on the centre, he was covered for a moment by a ·450 Express; but, not breaking covert, no shot could be fired, and when next viewed the boar was trotting up a stone-slide on the extreme left. Here a rifle-shot broke a foreleg, and the disabled beast, unable to face the hill, retreated to the thicket below, scattering dogs and beaters in headlong flight. And now commenced the hue and cry—the real hard work for those who meant to see the end and earn the spoils of war. Presently Moro’s deep voice told us of the boar at bay, far away down in the depths of the defile. What followed in that hurly-burly—that mad scramble through brake and thicket, down crag and scree—cannot be written. Each man only knows what he did himself, or did not do. We can answer for three. One of these seated himself on a rock and lit a cigarette. The others, ten minutes later, arrived on the final scene, one minus his nether garments and sundry patches of skin, but in time to take part in the death of as grand a boar as roams the Spanish sierras.
This last spring (1910), after thirty-eight years, we revisited the Boca de la Foz, partly to reassure ourselves that the above description was not overdrawn. No! ‘Tis a terrible wild gorge, the Foz, but the days when we can follow a wounded boar through obstacles such as those have passed away. The boars, we were told, are still there, and so are the vultures in those magnificent crags. We climbed along the ledges and there were the great stick-built nests, each in its ancestral site. In March each contains a single egg; now (April) that is replaced by a leaden-hued chick. These cliffs are also tenanted by ravens and a single pair of choughs. Neophrons occupied the same cavern whence I shot a female in 1872, and crag-martins held their old abodes, plastered on to the roofs of the caves.
As April advances a new and striking bird-form arrives to adorn the higher sierras—the least observant can scarce miss this, the rock-thrush (Monticola saxatilis), conspicuous alike in plumage and actions; with clear blue head and chestnut breast, its colour-scheme includes a broad patch of white set in the centre of a dark back. The contrast is most effective, and, so far as we know, this “fashion” of a white back is unique among birds, unless indeed it be shared by Bonelli’s eagle. The rock-thrush is also endowed with a lovely wild song, quite low and simple, but replete with a fine “high-tops” quality. By April 20 he yields to vernal impulses, and his courting is pretty to see; wheeling around on transparent pinions, he soars and sings the livelong day; at intervals, with collapsed wing, he drops like a stone to join his sober-hued mate among the rocks; a few picturesque poses, displaying all those flashing tints of orange and opal, and off he goes again to soar and sing once more. His cousin, the blue-thrush, has also a sweet song and a similar hovering flight, ending in a “drop act”; but the ascent is more vertical, while frequently he varies the descent and comes fluttering down in tree-pipit or butterfly-like style. Even the sober little blackchat now “shows off,” perched on some boulder with quivering wings and tail spread fan-like over his back. Both these two last, being resident, nest much earlier than the migratory rock-thrush: the latter was building (in crevices of the rocks) by mid-April, but hardly lays before May.
These sierras being only 3000 to 4000 feet, one misses here some of the alpine forms observed at higher altitudes. The tawny pipit, for example, a sandy-hued bird with dark eye-stripe and active wagtail-like gait, which was common on San Cristobal at 4500 feet in April, never showed up here at all; nor did any of the following species, all so characteristic of the higher ground: Blackstarts, woodlarks, rock-buntings, cole-and longtail-tits, and tree-creepers. The choughs, spotted woodpeckers, rock-thrushes, crag-martins, and wood-pigeons, though observed, were here very much scarcer. The lammergeyer, too, rarely descends here, and then only while in his smoke-black uniform of immaturity.
The Puerta de Palomas
In May 1883, while returning from Ubrique, our horses fell lame owing to loss of shoes, and for four days and nights we were encamped in the pass known as the Puerta de Palomas. There is a tiny ventorillo, or wayside wine-shop, at the foot of the pass; but nights are warm in May, and we preferred the freedom of the open hill, where the strange growls made by the griffons at dawn, together with the awakening carol of the rock-thrush, formed our reveille each morning in that roofless bedroom amidst the boulders.
The opposite side of the pass is dominated by the picturesque pile called the Picacho del Aljibe, a conical peak that towers in tiers of crags above the adjoining sierras not unlike a gigantic Arthur’s Seat over the Salisbury Crags. Our own side was rather a chaotic jumble of detached monoliths than cliffs proper, and by clambering over these we reached in one morning sixteen vultures’ nests, the easiest of access we ever struck. They were mostly very slight affairs, bare rock often protruding through the scanty structure; though, where necessary, a broad platform of sticks was provided—as sketched. The poults (only one in each nest) were now as big as guinea-fowls, with brown feathers sprouting through the white down. These eyries, albeit slightly malodorous, are always strictly clean, since vultures feed their young by disgorging half-digested food from their own crops, and we watched this not-pleasing operation being performed within some eighty yards’ distance; hence there is no carrion or putrefying matter lying about, as is the case with the neophron and lammergeyer.