134 The Great Bustard 
who has vastly greater experience than have I of Morocco reports 
seeing a good many Bustard in the spring months, including one 
band of twenty-three. But it seems certain that at no time do the 
numbers in Morocco in any degree approach those which are met 
with in Andalucia. 
Colonel Irby never noticed any migration of the Great Bustard 
in southern Spain, whereas in the Crimea he saw large flocks 
passing south during the autumn migration. My own view is 
that like all so-called resident species in any country, they 
shift their quarters from time to time and that these movements 
are dependent on questions of food, general convenience and 
nesting. But that the Spanish Bustard are a migratory species 
in the same sense as the Crane and others I do not believe. 
These shiftings of quarters may involve considerable flights. 
Thus during the last eighteen years several Bustards have 
appeared from time to time on the plain between the Palmones 
River and the Guadarranque River near Gibraltar, which implied 
that they had crossed the Sierra for at least twenty-five miles from 
the nearest possible Bustard country. They have also been seen 
crossing the Serrania of Ronda, some 60 miles from the plains 
near Cadiz, but such flights do not necessarily imply a_ true 
migration, but rather a change of ground. 
It is, of course, no distance across the Straits of Gibraltar, 
but it seems almost inconceivable that were there a migration 
of the nature seen by Colonel Irby in the Crimea, neither he nor 
others like myself who have been many years in the country 
should have seen anything of it. 
Bustards seem to group themselves into small colonies which 
systematically attach themselves to certain definite districts, which 
as a rule they do not leave for any considerable period. When 
in the natural course of seeking their food they fly to outlying 
places, sooner or later they return to their own piece of country. 
