Unexplored Spain Part 44

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 ma.s.sed in solid herds up to mid-May. A band of 300 that we examined closely on the 12th at the Cano 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 alt.i.tude almost beyond the range even of prism-gla.s.ses--it was a dim similitude to drifting _cirri_ that first caught our eye. So vast was their aerial 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 ident.i.ty. 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.

Ducks also in mid-May serried the skies in utterly anachronous skeins--reminiscent of winter. These were largely marbled ducks, all unpaired; but there were also very large aggregations of mallards. One such pack on May 10 certainly counted 500--a number we never remember to have seen ma.s.sed together in Spain before, not even in winter. This was at the Hondon. A similar phenomenon was observed with the white-faced ducks. These curious creatures also remained in packs, and without sign of pairing, on the open waters of Santolalla--open only because aquatic plants had forborne to grow. In normal seasons these lakes are studded with great cane-brakes and islanded reed-jungles, within whose recesses these amphibians build their floating homes. This spring not a reed had grown--partly owing to cattle having destroyed the earlier shoots which are usually protected by deep water. There was literally no covert within which these ducks (and the swarming coots and grebes) could breed, even were they so minded--which they were not!

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 quant.i.ties of mallard.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HEAD OF CRESTED COOT

The frontal plate is concave, whereas in the common coot it is convex.]

A collateral result of the shortage of water wrought yet further havoc among the birds which had elected to remain, and accentuated the prescience of those that had departed. Nesting-places, ordinarily islanded in mid-water, were now left stranded on dry land and thus open to the ravages of the whole fraternity of four-footed egg-devouring vermin. Many species, we know, foresee such risks and invariably avoid them; others, less prudent, make the attempt and lose their labour. The white-eyed pochards, for example, which are accustomed to nest in islanded clumps of rush and dense aquatic gra.s.ses, this year simply provided free breakfasts to rats and ichneumons! We happened to require two or three settings of these ducks to hatch-off under hens, but no sooner did a marked nest contain three or four eggs than all were devoured! As to the coots, of which both the common and crested species breed in the marisma in myriads, they simply gave it up as a bad business. They did not depart, but resigned themselves to the necessity of skipping a season.

Gulls, great and small, with graceful marsh-terns, floated spectre-like, surveying in solitude and silence arid wastes where before they had found aquatic Edens. Once or twice we also noticed the small white herons (buff-backed and egret) flying disconsolately over their lost homes. A similar remark would apply to most of the other marsh-breeders--we need not recapitulate them all. Stilts, for example, and avocets remained perforce in single blessedness--the latter in noisy querulous bands, quite wild and showing no tendency to a.s.sume spring notes or habits. We _did_ chance on a single avocet's nest, where, in other years, we have found hundreds. The same with the stilts--they also retained winter ways. Curiously on May 17--one wet day--two male stilts had a regular set-to over an irresponsive female; the only symptom of their love-making we noticed all that spring!

[Ill.u.s.tration: AVOCETS FEEDING

Though long-legged, these are half-webfooted and swim freely.]

Here, in the very height of what ought to have been the breeding-season, we had all these birds (and many others), instead of hovering overhead and shrieking in one's ear, flying wild in great packs at 100 yards.

How came it to pa.s.s that the normal vernal impulse was neglected for a whole season, unfelt and unrecognised--what was the precise psychological reason? It reads ridiculous to a.s.sume that any feathered husband should deliberately remark: "Now, Angelina, don't you agree that it would be imprudent our attempting to raise a family this drought-struck season?" Nor could the neglect arise from physical weakness, since the birds were strong and wild. Such specimens as we shot proved plump and well favoured, though the generative organs disclosed a hybernal obsolescence. One explanation--indeed a rough-and-ready diagnosis that seemed to cover the ground--was given by Vasquez. Now Vasquez is our Guarda of the marisma; he is not scientific, but has been in charge of the wilderness and its wildfowl these thirty years and, more than all, he is observant. This rough keeper perhaps understands the inner lives of wildfowl, with the causes that actuate their movements and habits, better than our best scientists, and Vasquez told us in February: "This year no birds will breed here; the conditions necessary to _calientar los ovarios_ [literally, to warm up the ovaries]

are wanting." The subsequent course of events, corroborated by the evidence of dissection, proved the correctness of his forecast.

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.

A week earlier, however, at another lake of quite different formation and different plant-growth (thirty miles away), we had found these singular waterfowl already nesting, and append a note of that day:--

[Ill.u.s.tration: WHITE-FACED DUCK (_Erismatura leucocephala_). See also p.

28.]

LAGUNA DE LAS TERAJES, _May 8._--A lonely lagoon hidden away in a saucer-shaped basin amidst sequestered downs; almost the entire extent (twenty acres) choked with dense cane-brakes and thick green reeds which stood six or eight feet above water. We had driven hither, nine miles, across sandy heaths and pine-wood; and while breakfasting on the sh.o.r.e our two canoes (carted here yesterday) were got afloat. Meanwhile, on a patch of open water we had observed several white-faced ducks swimming, deeply immersed, and with their long stiff tails c.o.c.ked upright at intervals, together with some eared grebes; while marsh-harriers slowly quartered the brakes and the reed-beds rang with the harsh nasal notes of the great sedge-warbler. On pus.h.i.+ng out into the aquatic jungle ahead--no light labour with five feet of water enc.u.mbered with densely matted canes and the dead tangle of former growths--we soon fell in with nests of all the species above mentioned and several more. Those of the white-faced ducks consisted, first, of a big floating platform of broken canes, upon which was piled a ma.s.s of fine dried "duck-weed"--the coots'

nests being formed of flags and reeds alone. None of the ducks' nests contained eggs; probably the season was too early (in other years we have found their great white eggs, rough-grained, about the third week in May), but possibly the harriers had forestalled us, as we found one egg floating alongside. The grebes were just beginning to lay; their nests, composed of rotten floatage, all awash and malodorous, containing one to three eggs. Next we found two nests of marsh-harriers, immense ma.s.ses of dead flags, two feet high, supported on floating canes and lined with sticks, heather-stalks, and palmetto. One had four eggs, hard-sat; the other, two eggs, chipping, and two small young in white down, with savage black eyes. The harriers' eggs are usually dull white; in one nest found this year, however, the eggs were spotted with pale red--apparently blood-stains. Hard by were two nests of the purple water-hen, both of which had obviously been recently robbed by the harriers next door.

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 ma.s.ses 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.

In the densest brake bred purple herons, but this part proved quite impenetrable to canoes. A few days later, however, at the Retuerta, we reached a little colony of three nests. A beautiful sight they presented, broad platforms of criss-crossed canes, cleverly supported on tall bamboos, and lined with the flowering tops of _carrizos_ (canes).

These three nests were close together (another or two hard by), were about five feet above water-level, and contained three, three, and four pale-blue eggs. While circling around their nests, the old herons showed a conspicuous projection beneath their curved necks. We therefore shot one and found the effect was caused by a curious "kink" or bony process on the front of the upper neck--as sketched.

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 Ca.n.a.lejas, 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PURPLE HERON (_Ardea purpurea_)]

Another phenomenon of the Spanish marismas is the through-transit in May of that little group of world-wanderers that make a winter-home in the southern hemisphere--in South Africa and Madagascar, Australia, New Zealand, some even in Patagonia--and yet return each spring to summer in Arctic regions. These comprise, notably, but four species, and not one of these four, in our view, is excelled for perfect beauty of bright, chaste, and contrasted coloration by any other bird-form on earth. This quartette is composed of the grey plover, knot, curlew-sandpiper, and bartailed G.o.dwit--all four of which appear here in thousands every May, and all in summer dress.

Note, first, that these do not arrive in Spain (having come 6000 or 8000 miles but being still 2000 or 3000 miles short of their final destination) until long after all other birds--including several congeneric and closely related species--have already laid their eggs and many hatched their young. Also, secondly, that some of them begin to a.s.sume their spring breeding-plumage under autumnal conditions _before_ quitting Australia in April--that is, the Australian autumn--and while yet some 10,000 miles distant from the points at which that breeding-dress is designed to be worn.

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 p.r.o.nounced and noticeable.

Last spring (1910), dry as the marismas were, we had these globe-spanners in thousands. They were extremely wild, and it was only by elaborate "drives" that we secured a few specimens.[68] We also observed in mid-May hundreds of _black_-tailed G.o.dwits, a species which usually disappears from southern Spain at end of March and which we have found nesting in Jutland _before_ the above date, viz. the first week in May.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GREY PLOVERS

In summer plumage, on route for Siberia--Marisma, May 12.]

Whimbrels had been extremely abundant early in May, together with a few greenshanks, ring-dotterel, and green sandpiper. On May 13 we observed several of the Mediterranean black-headed gull (_Larus melanocephalus_) on Santolalla.

[NOTE.--Referring to the last sentence, our companion, Commander H.

Lynes, R. N., writes:--"All the gulls I saw on Santolalla I am positive were _L. ridibundus_, and I looked most carefully. The wing-pattern of _melanocephalus_ is very distinct. With the latter I became quite familiar in the Mediterranean in winter, and also saw them in late summer at Smyrna." We, nevertheless, leave our own record as above, being confident that such gulls as happened to come within our own view were _exclusively_ of the southern species, with its darker and deeper hood. But the occurrence of our British Black-headed Gull so far south in mid-May is also remarkable. That species, though abundant all winter, has disappeared, as a rule, by the end of March. Our own last note of observing it during the spring in question was on April 1. We may add a further note of having observed _both_ species (swimming alongside) on Guadalquivir, March 12, 1909. The distinction, alike in the depth and darker shade of the "hood" in _L. melanocephalus_, was unmistakable, even to naked eye.]

This dry spring not a spoonbill nested in Andalucia. The teeming _pajareras_, or heronries, at the Rocina de la Madre and in Donana were left lifeless and abandoned. In normal years these are tenanted (as shown in photo at p. 32) by countless mult.i.tudes of buff-backed, squacco, and night-herons, glossy ibis, some purple herons, and a few pairs of spoonbills, whose ma.s.sed nests fairly weigh down the marsh-girt tamarisks.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ORPHEAN WARBLER (_Sylvia orphea_)

Arrives end of April; hardly so brilliant a songster as its specific t.i.tle would import.]

CHAPTER XL

SKETCHES OF SPANISH BIRD-LIFE

Spain is a land where one can enjoy seeing in their everyday life those "rare" British birds that at home can only be seen in books or museums.

So far as it can be done in half-a-dozen brief sketches, we will endeavour to ill.u.s.trate this.

I. AN EVENING'S STROLL FROM JEREZ.

Spanish towns and villages are self-contained like the "fenced cities"

of Biblical days. The _pueblecitos_ of the sierra show up as a concrete splash of white on the brown hillside. Once outside the gates you are in the _campo_ = the country. Even Jerez with its 60,000 inhabitants boasts no suburban zone. Within half an hour's walk one may witness scenes in wild bird-life for the like of which home-staying naturalists sigh in vain. We are at our "home-marsh," a mile or two away: it is mid-February. Within fifteen yards a dozen stilts stalk in the shallows; hard by is a group of G.o.dwits, some probing the ooze, the rest preening in eccentric outstretched poses. Beyond, the drier sh.o.r.e is adorned by snow-white egrets (_Ardea bubulcus_), some perched on our cattle, relieving their tick-tormented hides.

Thus, within less than fifty yards, we have in view three of the rarest and most exquisite of British birds. And the list can be prolonged. A marsh-harrier in menacing flight, his broad wings brus.h.i.+ng the bulrushes, sweeps across the bog, startling a mallard and snipes; there are storks and whimbrels in sight (the latter possibly slender-billed curlew), and a pack of lesser bustard crouch within 500 yards in the palmettos. From a marsh-drain springs a green sandpiper; and as we take our homeward way, serenaded by bull-frogs and mole-crickets, there resounds overhead the clarion-note of cranes cleaving their way due north.

II. AN ISOLATED CRAG IN ANDALUCIA