27 Unexplored Spain 
Science is impersonal, the impulsion of a naturalist springs 
from devotion to his subject, and from no extrinsic motive 
—such as personal kudos. Nevertheless, we make this categoric 
claim for ourselves simply because the credit, quantum valeat, 
has since been (not claimed straight away, but rather) insinuated 
on behalf of others who didn’t earn it—analogous with the case 
of Dr. Cook and the North Pole. 
Where do these thousands of Spanish flamingoes breed, and 
how do they maintain their numbers, when Spain, three years out 
of five, is too dry for nesting purposes? The only obvious answer 
is, Africa. And, though incapable yet of direct proof, that answer 
is clearly correct. For flamingoes are essentially denizens of the 
tropic zone. The few that ever overlap into southern Europe are but 
a fraction of their swarming millions farther south. During our 
own expeditions into British East Africa, we found flamingoes in 
vast abundance on all the equatorial lakes we visited—Baringo, 
Nakuru, Elmenteita, Naivasha, and, especially, Lake Hannington, 
where, during past ages, they have so polluted the foreshores as 
to preclude human occupation. These were the same flamingoes, 
a few of which “slop over” into Europe; we shot two specimens 
with the rifle in Nakuru to prove that.’ 
Flamingoes are not migratory in an ordinary sense—birds 
born on the equator seldom are. Their movements have no 
seasonal character, but depend on the rainfall and the varying 
condition of the lagoons at different points within their range. 
Here, in Spain, we see them coming and going, to and fro, at all 
seasons according to the state of the marisma—and a striking 
colour-study they present when pink battalions contrast with 
dark-green pine beneath and set off by deepest azure above. 
In 1907 flamingoes attempted to establish a nesting-colony 
at a spot called Las Albacias in the marisma of Hinojos. A 
mass of nests was already half built, then suddenly abandoned. 
“If the shadow of a cloud passes over them, they forsake,” say 
the herdsmen of the wilderness. 
Quantities of drift grass and weed are always found floating 
where a herd has been feeding, which at first led us to suppose 
that their food consisted of water-plants (as with geese), but 
1 We also observed in Equatoria a second species, smaller and red all over, Phoenicopterus 
minor. This, however, was far less numerous; the great bulk of East-African flamingoes 
were the common Ph. roseus. 
