382 Unexplored Spain 
Though the great Jucios stood five feet deep in February, yet t 
deepest will be stone-dry by midsummer or, at latest, by St. Ja, 
(July 24). Cattle and the wild-game can then only drink at t 
narrowed pools where permanent water, however exiguous, 00z 
forth—or the cattle from wells. In normal years, however, t: 
marsh-birds have already reared their broods before these dates. 
But in years of drought—what resource have they, where «: 
they find a substitute for their sun-destroyed and desola 
incunabula? Many (the waders in particular) instinctive 
prognosticate a drought; few, comparatively, either come 
remain—those that come pass on. Even such birds as breed « 
permanent deep-water lakes (such, for example, as the small 
herons, egrets, and ibises) perceive in advance that, although the 
may have water assured, there will neither be sufficient cover 
later on, to conceal their nurseries nor food for the rearing 
their young. The erewhiles teeming heronries are abandoned. 
Never within forty years has there occurred a drier seasc 
than this last, 1909-10. Incidentally we may remark that mo 
of the previous spring-tides that we had expressly devoted | 
the marisma had been years of excessive rainfall, years whe 
flamingoes nested abundantly-—an unfailing index. Such w: 
1872, for example, 1879, and 1883; again, in April 1891, v 
remember our gunning-punt, caught in a squall, sinking beneat 
us in quite three feet of water though barely a mile from shor 
These are the seasons when (as described in Wald Spain) ox 
sees the waterfowl in their fullest abundance. On the presei 
occasion (1910) we were to witness converse conditions. Throug] 
out the preceding winter the fountains of heaven had been staye: 
nor did the advent of spring bring one hour of rain. By mi 
March the marisma was practically waterless—a fortnight late 
sunbaked hard as bricks. Where now were the marsh-birds 
In April or May you could ride a long day over arid mud-fla 
and never see a wing, bar, in the Jatter month, a few Kentis 
plovers and fluttering pratincoles '—add a band or two of croal 
ing sand-grouse (Pterocles alchata) passing in the high heaven 
Where had the exiled myriads gone? No man can answer. 
Pratincoles cast themselves down flat on the dry mud, fluttering as though in mort 
agony—or, say, like a huge butterfly with a pin through its thorax! The device is presu: 
ably adopted in order to decoy an intruder away from their eggs or young. This year, ho 
ever, the pratincoles still practised it, although they had neither eggs nor young at all. O 
day (May 12) a gale of wind blew some of the deceivers bodily away. 
