dresser: IHREE WEEKS ON THE GUADALQUIVIR. 25 



cultivated tracts, some of them extremely beautiful, and we passed 

 several large orange and lemon gardens. Nightingales were so 

 numerous that it seemed as if there was at least one every dozen 

 yards along the bank, and we saw many other small birds in the 

 bushes and reeds on the banks as we steamed along. Arrived at 

 Seville in the afternoon, we took in a fresh supply of stores, and as 

 we purposed going into the woods on the morrow, we hired a lad 

 as a climber, and succeeded in getting the son of an English work- 

 man, who could speak Spanish and English, and was therefore 

 available as an interpreter for the Colonel, who could not speak 

 Spanish. After getting our supper with a friend, we went on board 

 and turned in, starting off soon after. At five o'clock (nth May) we 

 passed Coria again, and soon arrived at the place where we had 

 arranged for the horses to meet us ; and going ashore with our 

 baskets and food for the day, we at once started for the pinal or pine 

 woods, where we purposed spending the day. After riding some 

 distance through fields covered with grain, some being planted with 

 fig and apricot trees, and through olive gardens, the road being 

 a mere bridle-track, only available for horses and the rough native 

 carts, we arrived at a pine wood, but there we found but few nests, 

 and indeed up to lunch time we took no nests but those of the 

 Woodchat Shrike {Lanius pomeranus), Common Bunting {Embcriza 

 miliaria) — the eggs all much incubated, and one nest of the Black 

 Kite. 



The country here was very beautiful, large pine trees growing here 

 and there, the intervening space being overgrown with large cistus- 

 bushes, profusely covered with flowers — white, red, yellow, and white 

 with a red centre — and everywhere wild flowers grew in rich pro- 

 fusion, amongst which the most noticeable were a sort of rose 

 campion and a rich yellow chrysanthemum-like flower with a deep 

 purplish-brown centre. We also saw patches of a large plant with 

 a leaf like an amaryllis, which our guide told us was a sort of garlic, 

 bearing a long purplish flower. Whilst at lunch we were joined by 

 a keeper, who showed us a Black Kite's nest, out of which we took 

 two eggs, and a little later on we found a nest of a Kestrel {Falco 

 tinnunculus) containing five eggs. Both these nests, as well as others of 

 the Black Kite which we also found, were built in pine-trees and were by 

 no means easy to take, for these pines are invariably denuded of their 

 branches, except the very top ones, as they grow, and consequently 

 they are smooth and branchless except at the top, and as most of the 

 trees in which we found nests were from thirty to fifty feet high, it 

 was no joke to swarm up them, and we had good cause to regret not 

 having brought climbing-irons with us. Late in the afternoon we 



Jan. 1890. 



