Spring-time in the Marismas 385 
spectre-like, surveying in solitude and silence arid wastes where 
before they had found aquatic Edens. Once or twice we also 
noticed the small white herons (buff-backed and egret) flying 
disconsolately over their lost homes. A similar remark would 
apply to most of the other marsh -breeders—we need not 
recapitulate them all. Stilts, for example, and avocets remained 
perforce in single blessedness—the latter in noisy querulous 
bands, quite wild and showing no tendency to assume spring 
notes or habits. We did chance on a single avocet’s nest, where, 
in other years, we have found hundreds. The same with the 
stilts—they also retained winter ways. Curiously on May 17— 
AVOCETS FEEDING 
Though long-legged, these are half-webfooted and swim freely. 
the one wet day—two male stilts had a regular set-to over an 
irresponsive female; the only symptom of their love-making we 
noticed all that spring ! 
Here, in the very height of what ought to have been the 
breeding-season, we had all these birds (and many others), 
instead of hovering overhead and shrieking in one’s ear, flying 
wild in great packs at 100 yards. 
How came it to pass that the normal vernal impulse was 
neglected for a whole season, unfelt and unrecognised—what was 
the precise psychological reason? It reads ridiculous to assume 
that any feathered husband should deliberately remark: “ Now, 
Angelina, don’t you agree that it would be imprudent our 
2C 
