382 Unexplored Spain 



Though the great lucios stood five feet deep in February, yet the 

 deepest will be stone-dry by midsummer or, at latest, by St. Jago 

 (July 24). Cattle and the wild-game can then only drink at the 

 narrowed pools where permanent water, however exiguous, oozes 

 forth — or the cattle from wells. In normal years, however, the 

 marsh-birds have already reared their broods before these dates. 



But in years of drought — what resource have they, where can 

 they find a substitute for their sun -destroyed and desolate 

 incunabula ? Many (the waders in particular) instinctively 

 prognosticate a drought; few, comparatively, either come or 

 remain — those that come pass on. Even such birds as breed on 

 permanent deep-water lakes (such, for example, as the smaller 

 herons, egrets, and ibises) perceive in advance that, although they 

 may have water assured, there will neither be sufficient covert, 

 later on, to conceal their nurseries nor food for the rearing of 

 their young. The erewhiles teeming heronries are abandoned. 



Never within forty years has there occurred a drier season 

 than this last, 1909-10. Incidentally we may remark that most 

 of the previous spring-tides that we had expressly devoted to 

 the marisma had been years of excessive rainfall, years when 

 flamingoes nested abundantly — an unfailing index. Such was 

 1872, for example, 1879, and 1883; again, in April 1891, we 

 remember our gunning-punt, caught in a squall, sinking beneath 

 us in quite three feet of water though barely a mile from shore. 

 These are the seasons when (as described in Wild Spam) one 

 sees the waterfowl in their fullest abundance. On the present 

 occasion (1910) we were to witness converse conditions. Through- 

 out the preceding winter the fountains of heaven had been stayed, 

 nor did the advent of spring bring one hour of rain. By mid- 

 March the marisma was practically waterless — a fortnight later, 

 sunbaked hard as bricks. Where now were the marsh-birds? 

 In April or May you could ride a long day over arid mud-flats 

 and never see a wing, bar, in the latter month, a few Kentish 

 plovers and fluttering pratincoles ^— add a band or two of croak- 

 ino- sand-grouse {Ptcrocles alchata) passing in the high heavens. 

 Where had the exiled myriads gone ? No man can answer. 



' Pratincoles cast themselves down Hat on the dry mud, llutteriug as thouj^h in mortal 

 afony or, say, like a huge butterfly with a pin through its thorax ! The device is presum- 

 ably adopted in order to decoy an intruder away frojn their eggs or young. This year, how- 

 ever, the pratincoles still practised it, although they had neither eggs nor young at all. One 

 day (May 12) a gale of wind blew some of the deceivers bodily away. 



