Lord Lilford un the Ornithology of Spain. 183 



peasant, a tall, gaunt man of about fifty, simple-minded, and 

 civil, as are the generality of his fellows. I mention him thus 

 particularly, as I was so struck by his performance as a climber 

 on this occasion that 1 retained him in that capacity during the 

 remainder of my stay in Spain. He had come provided with a 

 rope, one end of which, after a few ineffectual attempts, he 

 managed to swing over the lowest bough of the tree in which 

 the nest was, and in a few minutes was hauling himself up, 

 hand over hand, after the fashion of a monkey. The nest con- 

 tained two young birds, just hatched, and two rotten eggs. So 

 much for our first day's nesting. On our way home we shot a 

 fine pair of Little Spotted Woodpeckers, Piciis minor, which I 

 had not previously observed in Spain. 



During the next few days we made excursions in different 

 directions about Aranjuez, and obtained several more nests of 

 Milvus iciinus, and added many species to my Spanish collec- 

 tion. On one occasion, Agapo, our climber, having ascended 

 to a likely-looking hole in a white poplar, after hacking for 

 some time with his bill-hook, declared that he could hear a 

 sound inside which could only proceed from " demonitos '' 

 (little devils) ; and after some stirring up with a stick, out flew 

 the imps of darkness in the shape of some twenty or thirty 

 large red bats, of which we shot seven. We procured several 

 nests of Sturnus unicolor, Serinus hortulorum, and other com- 

 mon birds. 



On the 29th, at Sotomayor, on the Tagus, a few miles above 

 Aranjuez, we found three nests of the Common Magpie, all con- 

 taining eggs of the Spotted Cuckoo, which is extremely com- 

 mon in this locality. In one nest were eight eggs of the 

 Magpie and three of the Cuckoo ; in another, one Magpie's and 

 three Cuckoo's ; and in the third, two of each species. In almost 

 every instance the eggs of the Cuckoo had been longer incu- 

 bated than those of the Magpie. A perpetual skirmish goes on 

 between these two species, the Magpies pursuing the Cuckoos 

 with loud outcries, but condescending, nevertheless, to rear the 

 young of the interloper to the detriment of their own families, 

 as I was assured, and, from my own later observations, am 

 inclined to believe, that the young Cuckoos forcibly eject the 



