92 



WILD SPAIN. 



beautiful purplish gloss. Three is their complement, and 

 they make hardly any nest, merely a few broken chips 

 of shells. We also found to-day, on the marismas of 

 Guadalete, two nests of the Montagu's Harrier, each with 

 five or six eggs, mere outlines of broken twigs arranged on 

 the bare soil, one among low scrub, the other in the corn. 

 The Marsh-Harrier breeds much earlier. "We found this 

 year three nests at the end of March — much more solid 

 structures, built of dead flags, &c. : one was in standing 

 corn, another on the ground hi a cane-brake, the third on 

 the top of a dense bramble-thicket, fifteen feet high — a 



IX THE MA.R1SMA— STILTS. 



very awkward place to get at. Occasionally, where there 

 was much water, we have found the Montagu's Harrier also 

 nesting in brushwood, three or four feet above the ground. 

 In the water beneath are strewn skulls of rabbits, ver- 

 tebra; of lizards, &c. 



Later, again, are the Terns : the Whiskered and Black 

 species (Hydrochelidon hi/brida and H. nigra) breed in 

 colonies both in the open marisma and on the lagoons of 

 the Goto Douana, building their nests far out on the lilies 

 and. floating water-weeds. All these lay three eggs, those 

 of the Whiskered Tern mostly greenish with black spots, a 

 few olive-brown. The eggs of the Black Tern are much 



