The Marismas. 19 



silently after it, keeping well up in the straight flying, hut 

 getting sadly behind whenever it tried to follow the curlew's 

 sudden twists and turns. We watched this curious chase 

 until the birds were mere specks many miles away, and 

 we wondered much if the vulture had a private spite 

 against that stone curlew, or if it merely needed exercise 

 after some unwholesome gorge. 



Never shall we forget our first day in a Uicia. From 

 afar we had seen the water — a great glistening expanse, 

 unbroken save for a group of cattle away on the left, and 

 straight before us a straggling bed of tall greyish reeds. 

 As we got nearer, the reeds gradually took the shape of 

 birds, until at length a long line of flamingoes* was 

 revealed standing in knee-deep water. They looked a 

 dazzling white in the brilliant sunshine. Bound them were 

 hundreds of dark dots, ducks of various kinds, and a little 

 way off a small group of white clumsy-looking birds, which 

 we made out with glasses to be spoonbills.! Nearer to us, 

 in shallower water, black and white avocetsj and long- 

 legged stilt s§ were feeding, while round the margins of 

 the water, dabbling in the soft mud, were hundreds of 

 small wading birds of various kinds. 



We determined to devote ourselves first to the flamingoes, 

 and try to stalk these wary birds. Our men put their 

 cahestros in stalking trim, and we started to crouch behind 

 them when about two miles away from the birds. Before 

 we reached the water we came across a group of fifty or 

 sixty mounds of mud some eight or ten inches high. 

 These were old nests of the flamingoes, and oar men told us 

 that the birds had laid there the year before, when water was 

 plentiful, but that in this dry season the nests were half a 



* Phoenicopterus roseus. f Platalea leucorodia. 



X Recurvirostra avocetta. § Himantopus candid us. 



b2 



