4.0 Unexplored Spain 
may be found (some of them) scattered through these chapters. 
But the present is not the place for detail. 
The land-birds in winter you hardly see, for they “take 
cover.” 
Diametrically different—in cause and effect—is the case of 
wildfowl. These, by the essence of their natures and by their 
economic necessities, are always conspicuous, for they inhabit 
solely the open spaces of earth—the “spaces” that no longer 
exist at home: shallows, wastes, and tidal flats devoid of covert. 
Wildfowl, for that reason, have long learnt to discard all attempt 
at concealment, to rely for safety upon their own eyesight and 
incredible wildness. No illusory idea that security may be 
sought in covert abuses their keen and, receptive instincts. 
Probably it never did. Nowadays, at any rate, they openly defy 
the human race with all its brain-begotten devices. There, in 
“ waste places,” wildfowl sit or fly—millions of them—conspicuous 
and audible so far as human sense of sight and sound can reach, 
and there bid defiance to us all. Much of these wastes are not 
(in the cant of a hypocritical age) “ undeveloped,” but rather, as 
means exist, incapable of development. Such spectacles of wild 
life as these Andalucian marismas to-day present are probably 
unsurpassed elsewhere in Europe—or possibly in the world. In 
foreground, background, and horizon both earth and sky are filled 
with teeming, living multitudes; while the shimmering grey 
monotony of the marisma, tessellated with its grey armies of 
the Anatidae, is everywhere brightened and adorned by rosy 
battalions of flamingoes. And out there, far beyond our visible 
horizon, there wander in that watery wilderness the wild camels, 
to which we devote a separate chapter. 
Flamingoes ignore the limits of continents, and shift their 
mobile headquarters between Europe and Africa as the respective 
rainfall in either happens to suit their requirements. Hence, 
whether by day or night, the sight or sound of gabbling 
columns of flamingoes passing through the upper air is a charac- 
teristic of these lonely regions, irrespective of season. Cranes also 
in marshalled ranks, and storks, continually pass to and fro. 
The African coast, of course, lies well within their range of vision 
from the start. 
Then as winter merges into spring—what time those clanging 
crowds of wild-geese and myriad north-bound ducks depart 
