One resource remained—to climb on to the top; and even in that direction a single bad rock might cut off escape. No such crowning catastrophe befell, but it was tooth-and-claw work, every yard of it, and the vertical height could not have been less than 1000 feet.

While thus “clawing up” I recollect passing a perfect glory in orchids—great twin purple blooms, golden-tipped and quite amorphous in outline. They grew just beyond my reach. Curious recumbent ferns clung to the rocks; anemones and violet-like bouquets peered from each cranny.

Meanwhile L., approaching from the other side, had examined the rock-stacks and succeeded in attaining one main objective—the nest of the eagle-owl. This was in a rock-cavern, close by that of ’83, easy of access—indeed the great owl flew out in his face as he passed below. The cave (four feet high by two wide) was at the foot of a vertical limestone cliff, its floor level with a goat-track that skirted the crag, and fully exposed to view; there was no nest nor any debris. Two young owls in white down, with one egg actually “chipping,” lay on the bare earth.

SPAIN is a land of flocks and herds, of breeders and graziers. At the head of the scale stands the fighting-bull, monarch of the richest vegas; at the opposite extreme come the shaggy little ponies and brood-mares that eke out a feral and precarious subsistence in the wildest regions. Throughout the marismas hardy beasts with wild-bred progeny on which no human hand has ever laid, abound, grazing knee-deep in watery wildernesses where tasteless reed or wiry spear-grass afford a bare subsistence.

There they live, splashing in the shadows, heads half-immersed as they pull up subaquatic herbage; on the back of one rides perched a snow-white egret, on another a couple of magpies, preying on ticks or warbles, while all around swim wildfowl that scarce deign to move aside.

No fowler could view such a scene without perceiving that approach to the wildfowl might be effected under cover of these unsuspected ponies. The earliest aucipial mind probably realised the advantage offered, and the system has been practised in Spain from time immemorial.

Should it be necessary to change course, that operation is effected by wheeling the pony stern-on to the fowl, the fowler meanwhile crouching low under his muzzle: critical moments ensue during which the expert has no cover but the pony’s breadth—instead of his length—to shield him from detection by hundreds of the keenest eyes on earth. But it is remarkable how little notice is taken of what is necessarily in full view provided that the exposed objects are beneath the covering animal. Once let a human head or a gun-barrel appear above its outline and the spell is broken. But otherwise—say during those interludes of feigned “grazing”—the suffering fowlers can straighten their backs by squatting down (in the water!) and thus enjoy at closest quarters a spectacle of wild creatures that is impossible to attain by any other means yet discovered. Though the fowlers are now fully visible, framed, as it were, beneath the cabresto’s belly and between his legs, no notice will be taken or any alarm created so long as the pony’s skylines remain unadorned with human appendages. There, within a score of yards, you sit face to face with ducks by the hundred, feeding, splashing, preening—all utterly unconcerned! Those of our readers who are most familiar with wildfowl will best realise how incredible such a statement must read. Ordinarily, the slightest visible movement—the mere glint of a gun-barrel though half masked by cover—suffices to shift every duck at one hundred yards and more. Here they ignore objects practically exposed and close at hand. Apparently the habitual companionship day by day of water-bred ponies has annihilated in their minds all sense of danger arising from such a quarter.

Obviously no comparison can be, or is, suggested as between two totally different performances. It has been solely for the purpose of learning the system, and also of enjoying unequalled views of wildfowl close at hand, that we have occasionally put in a day with the cabresto-ponies, and here annex a few records of shots made by this means, taken at random from our diaries.

A shot made in January 1894 seems worth recording merely in respect of the numbers killed by only some seven ounces of lead. An islet actually carpeted with teal was our target, and two 12-bores, aided by an ancient Spanish muzzle-loader (about 10-bore), realised fifty head, to wit, forty-nine teal and one mallard-drake.

The Stanchion-Gun in Spain

In contrast with the success of the cabresto system, the stancheon-gun proved a failure. So admirably adapted for punt-gunning appeared those great shallow marismas, that in 1888 we sent out the entire outfit and artillery for wildfowling afloat—a 22-foot double-handed gunning-punt and an 80-lb. gun to throw 16 oz. of shot.

The little craft reached the Guadalquivir in September, but unforeseen difficulties arose. The Spanish custom-house took alarm. True, the smart little gun-boat was an entire novelty—even in the Millwall docks she had created surprise; here she was incomprehensible. No such vessel had ever floated on Spanish waters, and the official mind needed time to consider. That oracle, after weeks of cogitation, ordered the removal of the suspicious craft from the obscure port of Bonanza to the fuller light that plays on the custom-house at Seville. There, after more weeks of delay, it was decided that the white-painted six-foot barrel was “an arm of war,” that “the combination of boat and gun savoured of the mechanism of war,” and, finally, that “the boat could not be permitted to pass the customs until it had been registered at the Admiralty.” Thus our Boadicea joined the Imperial Navy of Spain.

Seven months elapsed whilst these difficulties were in process of solution, and ere they were smoothed away (as difficulties in Spain, or elsewhere, do dissolve under prudent treatment), and the Boadicea set free to navigate the marismas, the season had passed and the migrant fowl had returned to the north.

THE withdrawal of the wildfowl at the vernal equinox affords an unequalled scenic display. It forms, moreover, one of those rare revelations of her inner working that Nature but seldom allows to man. Her operations, as a rule, are essentially secretive. A little may be revealed, the bulk must be inferred. Here, for once, a vast revolution is performed in open daylight, coram populo—that is, if the authors and a handful of Spanish fowlers be accepted as representative, since no other witness is present at these scenes enacted in remote watery wilderness.

Up to mid-February the daily life of the marisma continues as already described. From that date a new movement becomes perceptible—the seasonal redistribution. Daily there withdraw northward bands and detachments counting into thousands apiece. But no vacancy occurs since their places are simultaneously filled by corresponding arrivals from beyond the Mediterranean.

It is at this precise epoch that there occurs the phenomenon of which we have spoken.

Towards the close of February, dependent on the moon, a marked climatic change takes place. A period of sudden heat usually sets in—a sequence of warm sunny days, breathless, and at noontide almost suffocating. But each afternoon with flowing tide there arises from the sea a S. W. breeze, gentle at first and uncertain but gaining strength with the rising flood.

A mile to windward three such armies are mobilising separately within the scope of our view; and now the gentle force of that sea-breeze begins to impel those unconscious hosts, too preoccupied with all-absorbing passion to notice detail, directly towards the point whereat we lie concealed.

Holding the same massed formation, the fowl in three or four broadening circles quickly attain a considerable altitude—say 100 yards—and then head away on their course, ALWAYS (so far as they remain visible) to the SOUTH-EAST—diametrically opposite to the direction one would expect. As in deepening darkness we set forth on our homeward voyage, the heaven above pulsates at intervals with the beating of wings as yet more north-bound corros pass overhead.

Certain notable facts are observable in this vernal exodus. For upwards of twelve hours prior to departure the outgoing fowl take no food. That period is devoted exclusively to preparation and overhaul, and to pairing. Plumage is preened and dressed till each unit is spick and span, speckless, and not a feather misplaced. All, moreover, are absolutely empty—in best and lightest travelling trim.

BIRD-LIFE in the Spanish marisma—in spring no less than in winter—presents spectacles of such abounding variety as can nowhere in Europe be surpassed. In the Arctic are vaster aggregations, but these, comprising, say, only half-a-dozen species, are less attractive. It is the infinite kaleidoscopic succession of graceful and dissimilar forms that hour by hour flash on one’s sight—in a word, it is variety that lends abiding charm to our Spanish bird-world.

But in years of drought—what resource have they, where can they find a substitute for their sun-destroyed and desolate incunabula? Many (the waders in particular) instinctively prognosticate a drought; few, comparatively, either come or remain—those that come pass on. Even such birds as breed on permanent deep-water lakes (such, for example, as the smaller herons, egrets, and ibises) perceive in advance that, although they may have water assured, there will neither be sufficient covert, later on, to conceal their nurseries nor food for the rearing of their young. The erewhiles teeming heronries are abandoned.

We are not so foolish as attempt to say; but we do venture to express the opinion that in years when even wildest Spain refuses asylum to wild creatures such as these, the result to them can only represent an overwhelming catastrophe. For there lies before them no alternative refuge; their races must perish by wholesale.

At those rare points where permanent waters remained one might look for great concentrations of bird-life, yet such was not the case. As indicated, the bulk had foreseen the event and abandoned this country.

One phenomenon struck us as inexplicable. Of the birds that did remain none displayed the slightest symptom of yielding to the vernal impulse, of pairing, or of desiring to nest.

Flamingoes, for example (what few there were), continued massed in solid herds up to mid-May. A band of 300 that we examined closely on the 12th at the Caño de la Junquera (though fully 90 per cent were adults in perfect pink feather) contained not a single paired couple. Hard by the flamingoes some forty or fifty spoonbills were feeding. These, last year, nested at this spot, building upon or among the low samphire-scrub—a dangerously open situation for such big and conspicuous birds. This spring, though many remained in the marisma, not a spoonbill nested in the district at all. Flamingoes, by the way, had exhibited extreme restlessness throughout the spring. On February 22, for example, while steaming up the Straits of Gibraltar, we detected them in quite incredible numbers but at an altitude almost beyond the range even of prism-glasses—it was a dim similitude to drifting cirri that first caught our eye. So vast was their aërial elevation that it was only after prolonged examination we at length recognised those revolving grey specks as being birds at all; presently a nearer band, directly overhead, revealed their characteristic identity. The bulk of these held a southerly tendency, towards Africa; others drifted undecided; while several bands, halting between two opinions, when lost to sight were wheeling beyond the Spanish hills.

The only ducks that had paired in earnest were gadwall, garganey, common and white-eyed pochard (of which the first three nest here in very limited numbers), together with normal quantities of mallard.

For a moment we return to the white-faced ducks—no European bird-form less known, or more extravagant. With heavy, swollen beaks, quite disproportionate in size and pale waxy-blue in colour, with white heads, black necks, and rich chestnut bodies, their tiny wings (as well as the sheeny silken plumage) recall those of grebes, but they have long stiff tails like cormorants, and are more tenacious of the water than either of those. To push them on wing is well-nigh impossible. They seek safety in the middle waters and there abide, ignoring threats. To-day, however (May 16), we needed specimens, and by hustling their company between three guns, two mounted keepers, and an old boat that leaked like a sieve we eventually forced them to fly and secured three. They flew entirely in packs (not pairs), rarely many feet above the surface, but with a speed little inferior to pochard or other diving-ducks. Dissection showed that in a female the ovaries had not begun to develop, there were no ripe ova, nor had the oviduct been used. The testes in both the males proved also that here these birds were not yet breeding, or thinking of doing so.

These curious birds climb the tall green reeds parrot-wise, grasping four or five at once in their long, supple, heavily clawed toes; then with their powerful red beaks neatly cut down the reeds a yard or more above water, in order to feed on the tender pith. Here and there float masses of these cut-down reeds, split and emptied—comederos, the natives call such spots. But the birds are silly enough to cut down the very reeds that surround their nests—thus exposing the huge piled-up structures to the gaze of their truculent neighbour, the egg-loving marsh-harrier. Instinct badly at fault here.

With a degree more intelligence, the purple water-hens might at least retaliate, by watching their opportunity and mopping-up the harriers’ young. They are amply equipped for such work, having great pincer-like beaks fit to cut barbed wire!

On the other hand, the great purple water-hens habitually do a bit robbery and murder on their own account, plundering the nests both of ducks and coots and devouring eggs or young alike. We shot one whose beak was smeared all over with yolk from a plundered duck’s nest hard by, and alongside the nest of a Porphyrio with five eggs (found May 1) lay floating the head-less corpses of two young coots. We have also observed similar phenomena alongside the nests of the coots themselves—doubtless attributable to the same cause. The eggs of the purple water-hen are lovely objects, ruddier and much more richly coloured than those of any of its congeners. These birds remain in the marismas all winter.

Of other birds observed at this Laguna de Terajes may be noted a few mallard and marbled ducks, a pair of squacco herons (not breeding), common sandpipers (on May 8), and a party of whiskered terns which arrived while we were there.

The day we had spent among the marsh-birds at this sequestered lagoon happened to be the day of the general election and the usual excitement prevailed. Yet, as we journeyed down by the early train, we had read in the morning’s paper this paragraph: “An understanding” [Inteligencia]—“Yesterday an understanding was arrived at in Madrid between Maura and Cañalejas, by which the former is to hold 225 seats.” Why, after that, bother further with an election? ‘Twill serve as an object-lesson at home.

To the four named might properly be added other two species—the sanderling and the little stint. Our only reason for confining our remarks to the original quartette is that, in Spain, the transit of the other two is less pronounced and noticeable.