268 Unexplored Spain 
when the mud was moist and plastic; then through shallow 
marsh and stagnant waters gradually deepening. Here from a 
patch of rush hard by sprang three hinds with their fawns and 
splashed away through the shallows, their russet pelts gleaming 
in the early sunlight. Gradually the water deepened ; “mucha 
agua, mucho fango!” groaned our companion, Felipe; but this 
morning we meant to reach the very heart of the marisma, and 
before ten o’clock were cooking our breakfast on a far-away islet 
whereon never British foot had trod before, and which was 
STILTS DISTURBED AT THEIR NESTING-PLACE 
literally strewn with avocets’ eggs, while nests of stilts, redshanks, 
pratincoles, and many more lay scattered around. 
During this day we discovered two nests of the slender-billed 
gull (Larus gelastes), not previously known to breed in Spain ; 
also, we then believed, those of the Mediterranean black-headed 
gull (L. melanocephalus), though the latter were afterwards as- 
eribed by oological experts (perhaps correctly) to the gull-billed 
tern (Sterna anglica), a species whose eggs we also found by 
the dozen. 
The immense aggregations of flamingoes which, in wet seasons, 
throng the middle marismas can scarce be described. Our bird- 
islets lay so remote from the low-lying shores that no land 
whatever was in sight; but the desolate horizon that surrounded 
them was adorned by an almost unbroken line of pink and white 
