IIO Unexplored Spain 
past the seductive decoys. At recurring moments during the 
next three or four hours (with blank intervals between) I 
enjoyed to the full this most delightful form of wildfowling, so 
totally different in practice to all others. 
Such is the speed of flighting fowl, such their keenness of 
vision and instant perception of danger, that but a momentary 
point of time—say the eighth of a second—is available fully 
to exploit each chance. Should the gunner rise too quick, the 
ducks are beyond the most effective range; yet within a space 
not to be measured by figures or words, they will have detected 
the fraud, and in a flash have scattered, shooting vertically 
upwards like a bunch of sky-rockets. 
Two features in the life-history of the duck-kind become 
apparent. The first points to the probability that adults pair 
for life, and that the mated couples keep together all winter even 
when forming component units in a crowd. For when an adult 
female is shot from the midst of a pack, the male will almost 
invariably accompany her in her fall to the very surface of the 
water, and will afterwards circle around, piping disconsolately, 
and even return again and again in search of his lost partner. 
This applies chiefly to wigeon, but we have frequently observed 
the same trait in pintail and occasionally in other species. It is 
only the drakes that display this constancy; a bereaved female 
continues her flight unheeding. 
The feature is most conspicuous when awaiting ducks at their 
feeding-grounds (comederos), but it also occurs when shooting on 
their flight-lines (correderos) between distant points. 
The second singular habit is the custom, particularly among 
wigeon, to form what are termed in Spanish magaiionas— 
little groups of four to a dozen birds consisting of a single female 
with a bevy of males in attendance, flying aimlessly hither 
and thither in a compact mass, the drakes constantly calling 
and the one female twisting and turning in all directions as 
though to avoid their attentions. The magajionas appear blind 
to all sense of danger, and will pass within easy range even 
though a gunner be fully exposed. Not only this, but a first 
shot may easily account for half-a-dozen, and should the hen be 
among the fallen, the survivors will come round again and again 
in search of her. We have known whole magajionas to be 
secured within a few minutes. 
