386 Unexplored Spain 
attempting to raise a family this drought-struck season?” Nor 
could the neglect arise from physical weakness, since the birds 
were strong and wild. Such specimens as we shot proved plump 
and well favoured, though the generative organs disclosed a 
hybernal obsolescence. One explanation—indeed a rough-and- 
ready diagnosis that seemed to cover the ground—was given by 
Vasquez. Now Vasquez is our Guarda of the marisma; he is 
not scientific, but has been in charge of the wilderness and its 
wildfowl these thirty years and, more than all, he is observant. 
This rough keeper perhaps understands the inner lives of wild- 
fowl, with the causes that actuate their movements and habits, 
better than our best scientists, and Vasquez told us in February : 
“This year no birds will breed here; the conditions necessary to 
calientér los ovdrios [literally, to warm up the ovaries] are 
wanting.” The subsequent course of events, corroborated by the 
evidence of dissection, proved the correctness of his forecast. 
For a moment we return to the white-faced ducks—no 
European bird-form less known, or more extravagant. With 
heavy, swollen beaks, quite disproportionate in size and pale 
waxy-blue in colour, with white heads, black necks, and rich 
chestnut bodies, their tiny wings (as well as the sheeny silken 
plumage) recall those of grebes, but they have long stiff tails like 
cormorants, and are more tenacious of the water than either of 
those. To push them on wing is well-nigh impossible. They 
seek safety in the middle waters and there abide, ignoring 
threats. To-day, however (May 16), we needed specimens, and 
by hustling their company between three guns, two mounted 
keepers, and an old boat that leaked like a sieve we eventually 
forced them to fly and secured three. They flew entirely in 
packs (not pairs), rarely many feet above the surface, but with a 
speed little inferior to pochard or other diving-ducks. Dissection 
showed that in a female the: ovaries had not begun to develop, 
there were no ripe ova, nor had the oviduct been used. The 
testes in both the males proved also that here these birds were 
not yet breeding, or thinking of doing so. 
A week earlier, however, at another lake of quite different 
formation and different plant-growth (thirty miles away), we had 
found these singular waterfowl already nesting, and append a 
note of that day :— 
