400 Unexplored Spain 
herself on her back and hold the hawk at bay, striking out right 
and left, for she has powerful claws and can scratch like a cat. 
Often the assailant is fairly beaten off; or should the fight end 
without visible issue, probably the coveted eggs have been hustled 
overboard in the tussle. Then it amuses to watch the harrier’s 
frantic efforts to recover the sunken prizes from the shallows. 
Great Spotted Cuckoo (Oxylophus glandarius).—A striking 
rakish form, this stranger from unknown Africa silently appears 
in Spain during the closing days of February or early in March. 
On the fifth evening of the latter month, while rambling in the 
bush on the watch for “some 
new thing,” a hawk-like figure 
swept by and perched on the 
outer branches of a thorny 
acacia. When shot, the bird 
dropped a yard or so, then 
clutching a bough with pre- 
hensile zygodactylic claws, hung 
suspended with so desperate a 
hold that it was with difficulty 
released. Waiting a few minutes, a harsh resonant scream— 
cheer-oh, thrice repeated—announced the arrival of the male, 
which fell winged on a patch of bog beyond. Ere we could reach 
the spot the bird had run back, regained the outer trees, and was 
climbing a willow-trunk more in the style of parrot than cuckoo. 
The beak was used for steadying, and so fast did it climb that 
we had to ascend after it. 
The beak in this species opens far back, giving a very wide 
gape—colour inside pink, deepening to dark carmine. We sketched 
and preserved both specimens, see p. 41 and above. 
As a rule this cuckoo disappears in early autumn, but we have 
an exceptional record of its occurrence in winter. One was shot 
at San Lucar de Barraméda, December 19, 1909. 
This cuckoo, like all its old-world congeners,! is parasitic in 
its domestic ménage—that is, it adopts a system of reproduction 
by proxy—relying, as Canon Tristram long ago put it, on finding 
a “ foundling hospital” for its young. But even the keen intellect 
+ The African bush-cuckoos, or coucals (Centropus), certainly build their own nests; but 
they are only related nominally, and the connection is remote. 
