CHAPTER XL • 



SKETCHES OF SPANISH BIRD-LIFE 



Spain is a land where one can enjoy seeing in tlieir everyday 

 life those "rare" British birds that at home can only be seen in 

 books or museums. So far as it can be done in half-a-dozen brief 

 sketches, we will endeavour to illustrate this. 



L An Evening's Stroll from Jerez 



Spanish towns and villages are self-contained like the " fenced 

 cities " of Biblical days. The pueblecitos of the sierra show up as a 

 concrete splash of white on the brown hillside. Once outside the 

 gates you are in the campo = the country. Even Jerez with its 

 60,000 inhabitants boasts no suburban zone. Within half an hour's 

 walk one may witness scenes in wild bird-life for the like of which 

 home-staying naturalists sigh in vain. We are at our "home- 

 marsh," a mile or two away : it is mid-February. Within fifteen 

 yards a dozen stilts stalk in the shallows ; hard by is a group of 

 godwits, some probing the ooze, the rest preening in eccentric 

 outstretched poses. Beyond, the drier shore is adorned by snow- 

 white egrets [Ardea hubulcus), some perched on our cattle, 

 relieving their tick-tormented hides. 



Thus, within less than fifty yards, we have in view three of 

 the rarest and most exquisite of British birds. And the list can 

 be prolonged. A marsh-harrier in menacing flight, his broad 

 wings brushing the bulrushes, sweeps across the bog, startling a 

 mallard and snipes ; there are storks and whimbrels in sight (the 

 latter possibly slender-billed curlew), and a pack of lesser bustard 

 crouch within 500 yards in the palmettos. From a marsh-drain 

 springs a green sandpiper ; and as we take our homeward way, 

 serenaded by bull-frogs and mole-crickets, there resounds over- 

 head the clarion-note of cranes cleaving their way due north. 



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