20 On the Guadalquiver. 



III. Reeds and Rushes. 



OUR second encampment in the marismas was surrounded 

 by somewhat different country from that described in 

 Knowledge, for March, 1899. Instead of scanty 

 verdure, dry mud and shallow lucias, we had stretches of 

 marshy land covered with fairly luxuriant grass, and great 

 lakes, shallow but deeper than lucias, and thickly overgrown 

 with rushes. This country, separated from the other only 

 by the river, was inhabited by quite a different set of birds 

 — a fact made more apparent when we re-visited the place 

 later on after the birds had commenced to breed. 



Instead of the larks and stone curlews of the dry plains, 

 and the flamingoes and migrant waders of the lucias, on 

 the borders of these rush-grown lakes were hundreds of 

 stilts and redshanks," while the lakes themselves were 

 inhabited by many colonies of whiskered terns f and black 

 terns.J Many other interesting birds had also located 

 themselves here and there in reedy dykes and on patches 

 of raised and dry ground. 



The first of these lakes we visited extended over several 



* Totanus calidris. f KydrocJielidon hyhrida. % ^- nigra. 



