1 6 SOME lilRDS Ol- THE CANARY ISLANDS 



sustained on such ground, as in the country which we 

 passed through immediately after leaving Puerto Cabras 

 there was no sign of vegetation of any kind to be seen. 



I diink the first birds that we saw, if I except a 

 Vulture, which was circling over the distant mountains, 

 were five or six of the Black-banded Sand-Grouse, 

 rising in front of us with a quick, pigeon-like flight, 

 very unlike that of any of our game birds. These birds 

 made a very peculiar sound on rising, quite impossible 

 to describe on paper. We met with these Sand-Grouse 

 rather sparingly during the whole of our visit, and they 

 did not appear to have started nesting by the end of 

 March ; the peasants call them Gaiiga, which means a 

 piece of good luck. Now and again a Kestrel would 

 hang over our path, floating away on the wind at our 

 approach, and commencing afresh its search for food. 

 These birds were not nearly so common here as they 

 were in Tenerife, where one or more of them was 

 generally to be seen in the air ; what they could possibly 

 have found to feed on in Fuerteventura it would be hard 

 to say. 



Lorenzo called my attention as we were gradually 

 branching off from the coast, pointing with his stick out 

 to sea, and there was the steamer in the distance, 

 making her way to Lanzarote, another island which lies 

 just to the north of Fuerteventura. Lanzarote is much 

 more thickly populated than the island that we are in, 

 and boasts of quite a good sized port, Arrecife by name, 

 but it is not nearly such a clean place as Puerto Cabras, 

 nor is the island so desirable from a natural history 

 point of view, being more cultivated than F^uerteventura. 

 After leaving the neiohbourhood of the sea shore 



