62 Un explored Spain 
violet. Strange diptera and winged creatures of many sorts and 
sizes, from gnat and midge to savage dragon-flies, rustle and 
drone in one’s ear or poise on iridescent wing in the sunlight, 
and the hateful hiss of the mosquito mingles with the insect- 
melody. Over each open flower of rock-rose or cistus hovers the 
humming-bird hawk-moth with, more rarely, one of the larger 
sphinxes (8. convolvulz), each with long proboscis inserted deep 
in tender calyx. Not even the butterflies are entirely absent. 
We have noticed gorgeous species at Christmas time, including 
clouded yellows, painted lady and red admiral, southern wood- 
argus, Bath white, Lycaena telicanus, Thiis polyxena, Megaera, 
and many more. On the warm sand at midday bask pretty 
green and spotted 
lizards,’ apparently 
asleep, but alert to 
dart off on slightest 
alarm, disappearing 
like a thought in 
some crevice of the 
cistus stems. 
Hard by a winter- 
wandering hoopoe 
struts in an open 
glade, prodding the 
earth with curved bill and crest laid back like a “claw- 
hammer”; from a tall cistus-spray the southern grey shrike 
mumbles his harsh soliloquy, and chattering magpies everywhere 
surmount the evergreen bush. Where the warm sunshine 
induces untimely ripening of the tamarisk, some brightly 
coloured birds flicker around pecking at the buds. They appear 
to be chaffinches, but a glance through the glass identifies 
them as bramblings—arctic migrants that we have shot here in 
midwinter with full black heads—in “ breeding-plumage” as 
some call it, though it is merely the result of the wearing-away 
of the original grey fringe to each feather, thus exposing the 
glossy violet-black bases. 
Birds, as a broad rule, possess no “ breeding-plumage.” They 
only renew their dress once a year, in the autumn, and breed the 
GREAT GREY SHRIKE (Lanius meridionalis) 
1 There are sand-lizards identical in colour with the sand itself—pale yellow or drab, 
adorned with wavy black lines closely resembling the wind-waves on the sand. 
