Spring-time in the Marismas 483 
We are not so foolish as attempt to say; but we do venture 
to express the opinion that in years when even wildest Spain 
refuses asylum to wild creatures such as these, the result to them 
can only represent an overwhelming catastrophe. For there lies 
before them no alternative refuge; their races must perish by 
wholesale. 
At those rare points where permanent waters remained one 
might look for great concentrations of bird-life, yet such was not 
the case. As indicated, the bulk had foreseen the event and 
abandoned this country. . 
One phenomenon struck us as inexplicable. Of the birds 
that did remain none displayed the slightest symptom of yielding 
to the vernal impulse, of pairing, or of desiring to nest. 
Flamingoes, for example (what few there were), continued 
massed in solid herds up to mid-May. A band of 300 that we 
examined closely on the 12th at the Cafio de la Junquera 
(though fully 90 per cent were adults in perfect pink feather) 
contained not a single paired couple. Hard by the flamingoes 
some forty or fifty spoonbills were feeding. ‘hese, last year, 
nested at this spot, building upon or among the low samphire- 
scrub—a dangerously open situation for such big and conspicuous 
birds. This spring, though many remained in the marisma, not 
a spoonbill nested in the district at all. Flamingoes, by the way, 
had exhibited extreme restlessness throughout the spring. On 
February 22, for example, while steaming up the Straits of 
Gibraltar, we detected them in quite incredible numbers but at an 
altitude almost beyond the range even of prism-glasses—it was a 
dim similitude to drifting cir7t that first caught our eye. So 
vast was their aérial elevation that it was only after prolonged 
examination we at length recognised those revolving grey specks 
as being birds at all; presently a nearer band, directly overhead, 
revealed their characteristic identity. The bulk of these held a 
southerly tendency, towards Africa; others drifted undecided ; 
while several bands, halting between two opinions, when lost to 
sight were wheeling beyond the Spanish hills. 
Ducks also in mid-May serried the skies in utterly anachronous 
skeins—reminiscent of winter. These were largely marbled ducks, 
all unpaired; but there were also very large aggregations of 
mallards. One such pack on May 10 certainly counted 500—a 
number we never remember to have seen massed together in 
