262 Unexplored Spain 



when passing on a drive, utter panting sounds, and (as already 

 mentioned) a winged harbon will turn to attack with a sort of 

 grutf bark — wufi", wuft' — as his captor approaches. 



So retentive is their memory that each year as May comes 

 round our tame bustards keep constantly on the look-out for the 

 first cart-load of green cut grass brought into the stable-yard for 

 the horses. They even follow it right into the loose-box wdiere 

 it is stored, in order to feast on the grasshoppers it conceals, 

 climbing all over the mountain of grass, but never scratching as 

 hens or pheasants would do. 



The Little Bustakd (Otis Tetrax — Spanish, Sison) 



The little bustard may fairly claim the proud distinction 

 that it alone of all the game-birds on earth can utterly scorn and 

 set at naught every artifice of the fowler — modern methods and 

 up-to-date appliances all included. Here in Spain, though the 

 bird itself is abundant enough (and its fiesh delicate and delicious), 

 it so entirely defies every set system of pursuit that no one 

 nowadays attempts its capture. Practically none are killed save 

 merely by some chance or accidental encounter. 



True, during the fiery noontides of July and August even the 

 little bustard enjoys a siesta and may then be shot. It will, 'in 

 fact, "lie close" before pointers and cackle like a cock-grouse as 

 it rises from those desolate dehesas w^hich form its home — vast 

 stretches of rolling veld wdiere asphodel, palmetto, and giant 

 thistles grow rampant as far as eye can reach. But that scarce 

 comes within our category of sport, since a solar heat that can 

 (even temporarily) tame a sison is quite likely to finish oft' a 

 Briton for good and all. And with the advent of autumn and a 

 relatively endurable temperature, in a moment the sison becomes 

 impossibly wild. Any idea of direct approach is simply out of 

 the cjuestion, but beyond that, this astute fowl has elaborated a 

 scheme — indeed a series of schemes — that nullifies even that one 

 remaining resource of baflfled humanity, "driving." You may 

 surround his company, "horse-shoe" them with hidden guns — do 

 what you will, not a single sison will come in to the firing-line. 

 You cannot diagnose beforehand his probable line of fiight, for 

 he has none, nor can you influence its subsequent direction. For 

 the little bustard shuts off" all negotiation at its initiation by 



