552 Unexplored Spain 
commotion as, realising the danger, each great bird with strong 
and laboured wing-stroke swerves aside. One enormous barbon 
directly overhead receives first attention ; a second, full broadside, 
presents no more difficulty, and ere the double thuds behind have 
attested the result, we realise that a third, shying off from our 
neighbour, is also ‘our meat.” This has proved one of our 
luckier drives, for the bandada, splitting up on the centre, 
offered chances to both flanks of the blockading line—chances 
which are not always fully exploited. 
We have stated, earlier in this chapter, that among the 
various component factors in a bustard-drive the actual shot is 
SWERVE ASIDE TO RIGHT AND LEFT 
of minor importance. That is so; yet truly remarkable is the 
frequency with which good shots constantly miss the easiest of 
chances at these great birds. Precisely similar failures occur 
with wild-geese, with swans—indeed with all big birds whose 
wing-action is deliberate and slow. Tardy strokes deceive the 
eye, and the great bulk of the bustard accentuates the deception 
—it seems impossible to miss them, a fatal error. As the 
Spanish drivers put it: ‘Se les llenaron el ojo de carne,” literally, 
“the bustards had filled your eye with meat ”—the hapless 
marksmen saw everything bustard! Yet geese with their 40 
strokes fly past ducks at 120, and the bustard’s apparently 
leisured movement carries him in full career as fast as whirring 
grouse with 200 revolutions to the minute. To kill bustard treat 
them on the same basis as the smaller game that appears faster 
but is not. 
Bustards being soft-plumaged are not hard to kill. As 
compared with such ironclads as wild-geese, they are singularly 
