183 
Lord Lilford on the Ornithology of Spain . 
peasant, a tall, gaunt man of about fifty, simple-minded, and 
civil, as are the generality of his fellows. I mention him thus 
particularly, as I was so struck by his performance as a climber 
on this occasion that I retained him in that capacity during the 
remainder of my stay in Spain. He had come provided with a 
rope, one end of which, after a few ineffectual attempts, he 
managed to swing over the lowest bough of the tree in which 
the nest was, and in a few minutes was hauling himself up, 
hand over hand, after the fashion of a monkey. The nest con¬ 
tained two young birds, just hatched, and two rotten eggs. So 
much for our first day's nesting. On our way home we shot a 
fine pair of Little Spotted Woodpeckers, Ficus minor, which I 
had not previously observed in Spain. 
During the next few days we made excursions in different 
directions about Araujuez, and obtained several more nests of 
Milvus ictinus , and added many species to my Spanish collec¬ 
tion. On one occasion, Agapo, our climber, having ascended 
to a likely-looking hole in a white poplar, after hacking for 
some time with his bill-hook, declared that he could hear a 
sound inside which could only proceed from “ demonitos " 
(little devils) ; and after some stirring up with a stick, out flew 
the imps of darkness in the shape of some twenty or thirty 
large red bats, of which we shot seven. We procured several 
nests of Sturnus unicolor, Serinus hortulorum, and other com¬ 
mon birds. 
On the 29th, at Sotomayor, on the Tagus, a few miles above 
Aranjuez, we found three nests of the Common Magpie, all con¬ 
taining eggs of the Spotted Cuckoo, which is extremely com¬ 
mon in this locality. In one nest were eight eggs of the 
Magpie and three of the Cuckoo; in another, one Magpie's and 
three Cuckoo's; and in the third, two of each species. In almost 
every instance the eggs of the Cuckoo had been longer incu¬ 
bated than those of the Magpie. A perpetual skirmish goes on 
between these two species, the Magpies pursuing the Cuckoos 
with loud outcries, but condescending, nevertheless, to rear the 
young of the interloper to the detriment of their own families, 
as I was assured, and, from my own later observations, am 
inclined to believe, that the young Cuckoos forcibly eject the 
