A Flight of Flamingoes 237 
words, to find a comfortable spot amid the sweet-smelling cistus 
and enjoy life whilst one could. It was now one o'clock and after 
lunching I lit a cigar and waited and watched and very pleasant 
it was. In the scrub around us the cheery little Dartford Warblers 
were ever on the move, and now and again a brilliant Hoopoe, just 
arrived from its winter sojourn in Africa, would flit past us with its 
curious undulatory flight, showing the conspicuous black and white 
barred wings; and, once, a beautiful Great Spotted Cuckoo (Coe- 
cystes glandarius) also only just come ashore, alighted on a pine 
tree close tous. Almost vertically below us the white surf of the 
Atlantic swell was breaking against the masses of loose sandstone 
fallen from the cliffs above, the water was intensely blue and clear 
with here and there pale shades of green and dark purple showing 
the presence of strips of sand and rock far below the surface. 
Presently we espied a great crowd of big birds somewhat resembling 
Wild Geese, flying close to the surface of the sea from the far distant 
African shore. As they neared us the sun struck on their backs and 
they became a mass of rose colour and we realized that they were 
Flamingoes, no doubt some of the pioneers of the spring migration, 
wending their way to the marismas of the Guadalquivir. As they 
passed below us, flying close together, so close indeed that at places 
their black-tipped wings seemed almost to touch and overlap, they 
presented an extraordinary spectacle—surely one rarely seen by the 
wandering naturalist—of a moving mass, crimson and rose and 
white, streaming over the dancing blue wavelets below, which 
changed its shape and size from one moment to another as the 
birds in their flight closed into a dense body or opened out again 
into sinuous lines. Their course took them inside the low sandy 
spit jutting out towards the lighthouse of Trafalgar and, apparently 
unwilling to trust themselves over the land, they altered their course 
and in long undulating lines flew boldly seaward. It was indeed an 
unusual spectacle seen from such a point of vantage so far above 
them. 
