THE BjETICAN WILDERNESS APRIL. 81 



which we saw this strictly winter-visitant to Andalucia, 

 none remaining to breed, though it is plentiful enough in 

 winter, and frequently observed while snipe- shooting. 



Early next morning (April 11th) we started to explore the 

 wooded swamps called La Eocina de la Madre — a nasty 

 place to work : consisting of thousands of grassy tussocks, 

 each surrounded by bog, in some places moderately firm 

 and safe, in others, apparently similar, deep and dangerous, 

 and everywhere swarming with leeches. In the centre of 

 the open marsh, surrounded by quaking-bog and a dense 

 growth of aquatic vegetation, rose a thick clump of low 

 trees, whose snake-like roots were growing out of the black 

 and stagnant water. These trees were occupied, some 

 laden, with hundreds of stick-built nests, the abodes 

 of the southern herons some of which we have already 

 mentioned — Egrets, Squaccos, Buff-backs, Night-Herons, 

 and the like : but nearly all this group nest very late (in 

 •June), and the colony was at this season tenantless. In 

 subsequent years we have obtained in these wooded swamps 

 the eggs of all the European herons: though it is not every 

 summer that they repair thither to breed. In very dry 

 seasons none are to be seen, but after a rainy spring, these 

 heron-colonies of the marisma are indeed a wondrous sight 

 — an almost sufficing reward for enduring the heat, the 

 languor-laden miasmas, and the fury of the myriad 

 mosquitos and leeches which in summer infest these 

 remote marshy regions. 



Climbing across the gnarled tree-roots to the other end 

 of the thicket, we found a larger nest, and just as we 

 emerged on the open, its owner, a female Booted Eagle, 

 passed within reach as she slowly quartered the marsh, 

 and fell to a charge of No. 2. This small, but compact and 

 handsome species, has been confounded with the Kough- 

 legged Buzzard ; but no one who has seen Aquila pennata 

 on the wing could mistake it for anything but an eagle. 

 The nest proved empty, after a difficult climb up a briar- 

 entwined trunk : but on the following day we found another, 

 in the first fork of a big cork-tree, containing one white 

 egg. Three is the full number laid by the Booted Eagle. 



G 



