Spring-time in the Marismas 385 



spectre-like, surveying in solitude and silence arid wastes where 

 before they had found aquatic Edens. Once or twice we also 

 noticed the small white herons (buff-backed and egret) flying 

 disconsolately over their lost homes. A similar remark would 

 apply to most of the other marsh - breeders — we need not 

 recapitulate them all. Stilts, for example, and avocets remained 

 perforce in single blessedness — the latter in noisy querulous 

 bands, quite wild and showing no tendency to assume spring 

 notes or habits. We did chance on a single avocet's nest, where, 

 in other years, we have found hundreds. The same with the 

 stilts — they also retained winter ways. Curiously on May 17 — 





-^V 



AVOCETS FEEDING 



Though long-legged, these are half-webfootetl and swim freely. 



the one wet day — two male stilts had a regular set-to over an 

 irresponsive female ; the only symptom of their love-making we 

 noticed all that spring ! 



Here, in the very height of what ought to have been the 

 breeding-season, we had all these birds (and many others), 

 instead of hovering overhead and shrieking in one's ear, flying 

 wild in great packs at 100 yards. 



How came it to j)ass that the normal vernal impulse was 

 neglected for a whole season, unfelt and unrecognised — what was 

 the precise psychological reason ? It reads ridiculous to assume 

 that any feathered husband should deliberately remark : " Now, 

 Angelina, don't you agree that it would be imprudent our 



2c 



