Summer and Winter Quarters i 
oF) 
ioe) 
reappear in small flocks on the plains and are to be seen feeding 
on the portions whence the water has recently retired and where 
the young grasses and herbage are now vigorously sprouting. 
Referring to my journals I see that this usually occurs about the 
end of January or early in February. 
Upon being disturbed at this time of the year they invariably 
fly off to the adjacent low-lying hills where it is no easy matter to 
follow them up and find them, as [ know from repeated experiences. 
Two-thirds of these hills are under cultivation at a time, one- 
third being laid fallow, and though the furrows turned by the 
Spanish ploughman with his team of oxen are shallow, the extra- 
ordinarily spongy nature of the soil, when the winter rains are on, 
causes one’s horse to sink at places to its hocks and renders walk- 
ing fer any length of time almost impossible either on plough land 
or fallow. During the wet season in such districts it is no unusual 
thing for communication to be cut off for days at a time between 
small villages and isolated cortzyos or farmsteads and the world, 
owing to the absence of roads and the awful condition of the 
veredas or tracks and, as I have said before, there are thousands 
and ten thousands of acres where Bustard could live for weeks and 
escape observation, more especially from the English sportsman 
who naturally enough rarely leaves the marshes and _ low-lying 
ground, 
The Spaniards declare that when the Great Bustards thus dis- 
appear from their usual haunts they go ‘to the Moors.” This, by 
the way, is the stock explanation of all that occurs, or has occurred, 
in Spain which it is difficult to account for otherwise. Some 
writers have asserted that the Great Bustard is unknown in 
Morocco but this is incorrect ; although my own wanderings do 
not extend more than 80 miles south of Tangier I have come 
across small parties in the level country south of the Kus River, 
between El] Kasr el Kebir and the Atlantic. Mr. Meade-Waldo, 
