128 A Ride across the Uega 
officers as they thought they might take their favourite cows 
away from them! 
Riding across the vega, from time to time you see flocks of 
Great Bustard feeding on the rich young grasses or catching 
grasshoppers amid the thistles and herbage. White Storks are 
dotted about the plain and now and again a pair of Cranes 
may be seen among the waving reeds. Along the sandy banks 
in the river beds beautiful Lesser Ringed Plovers (4gtalites 
curonica) are running. These little birds after the manner of 
their family make no nest but lay their three small sand-coloured 
eggs, spotted with black, in a small cup-shaped depression in 
the sand. At places where the receding winter floods have left 
bare patches of dry mud, the Pratincoles are congregated, sitting 
motionless until your horse is almost upon them when they rise 
with shrill cries and mob the traveller, settling down again only 
a few yards off, as he passes on. 
At rare intervals in these alluvial plains there are small 
, generally of disintegrated sandstone. Here amid 
the loose scattered stones the Stone-Curlew (Gidzcnemus scolopax) 
outcrops of rock 
delight to nest, laying their two stone-coloured eggs, and hard 
indeed are they to find. It is rarely worth the trouble to look 
for their eggs unless the old birds are seen on at least two 
occasions at the same spot, when it may be assumed that they 
are nesting hard by. 
The Grass Snake (77op:donotus natrix) attains to great size in 
southern Spain; and on the vega I have often seen specimens 5 ft. 
to 6 ft. in length and of proportionate girth. Sometimes when I 
have dismounted in order to catch one of these larger reptiles they 
have shown fight and upon being approached have raised them- 
selves up as if to strike, but their bite is of course harmless. Even 
more pugnacious are the Ocellated Lizards (Lacerta oce/lata, which, 
when pursued and overtaken by a man either on horse or foot, 
