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86 Unexplored Spain 



attempting to raise a family this drought-struck season ? " Nor 

 could the neglect arise from physical weakness, since the birds 

 were strong and wild. Such specimens as we shot proved plump 

 and well favoured, though the generative organs disclosed a 

 liybernal obsolescence. One explanation — indeed a rough-and- 

 ready diagnosis that seemed to cover the ground — was given by 

 Vasquez. Now Vasquez is our Guarda of the marisma ; he is 

 not scientific, but has been in charge of the wilderness and its 

 wildfowl these thirty years and, more than all, he is observant. 

 This rough keeper perhaps understands the inner lives of wild- 

 fowl, with the causes that actuate their movements and habits, 

 better than our best scientists, and Vasquez told us in February : 

 " This year no birds will breed here ; the conditions necessary to 

 calientdr los ovdrios [literally, to warm up the ovaries] are 

 wanting." The subsequent course of events, corroborated by the 

 evidence of dissection, proved the correctness of his forecast. 



For a moment we return to the white-faced ducks — no 

 European bird-form less known, or more extravagant. With 

 heavy, swollen beaks, quite disproportionate in size and pale 

 waxy-blue in colour, with white heads, black necks, and rich 

 chestnut bodies, their tiny wings (as well as the sheeny silken 

 plumage) recall those of grebes, but they have long stiff tails like 

 cormorants, and are more tenacious of the water than either of 

 those. To push them on wing is well-nigh impossible. They 

 seek safety in the middle waters and there abide, ignoring 

 threats. To-day, however (May 16), we needed specimens, and 

 by hustling their company between three guns, two mounted 

 keepers, and an old boat that leaked like a sieve we eventually 

 forced them to fly and secured three. They flew entirely in 

 packs (not pairs), rarely many feet above the surface, but with a 

 speed little inferior to pochard or other diving-ducks. Dissection 

 showed that in a female the ovaries had not begun to develop, 

 there were no ripe ova, nor had the oviduct been used. The 

 testes in both the males proved also that here these birds were 

 not yet breeding, or thinking of doing so. 



A week earlier, however, at another lake of quite diflerent 

 formation and diflerent plant-growth (thirty miles away), we had 

 found these singular waterfowl already nesting, and append a 

 note of that day : — 



