102 Unexplored Spain 
trasted colouring, and among them all, swing along with leisurely 
wing-beats but equal speed, wedge-like skeins of great grey-geese. 
A single morning’s bag may include seven or eight different 
species, sometimes a dozen. 
Now the rim of the sun shows over the distant sierra, and 
one begins to see one’s environment and to realise what Las 
Nuevas is like. Of Mother Earth as one normally conceives it 
not a particle is in sight, beyond such low reeds and miles of 
samphire-tops as break the watery surface, and a vista of this 
extends to the horizon. 
Behind our positions stretched a lucio of open water. 
Upon this, a mile away, stood an army of flamingoes, whose 
croaks and gabblings filled the still air. During a quiescent 
interval I examined these with binoculars. Thereupon I dis- 
covered that the whole Jucio around them and stretching away, 
say a league in length, was carpeted with legions of duck, which 
had not been noticed with the naked eye. The discovery ex- 
plained also a resonant reverberation that, at recurring intervals, 
I had noticed all the morning, and which I had attributed to 
the gallant Cervera’s squadron at quick-firing gun-practice away 
in Cadiz Bay. Now I saw the cause; it was due to the duck- 
hawks and birds-of-prey! Twice within ten minutes a swooping 
marsh-harrier aroused that host on wing—or, say, half-a-mile of 
them—to fly in terror; but only to settle a few hundred yards 
