Unexplored Spain Part 43

The little craft reached the Guadalquivir in September, but unforeseen difficulties arose. The Spanish custom-house took alarm. True, the smart little gun-boat was an entire novelty--even in the Millwall docks she had created surprise; here she was incomprehensible. No such vessel had ever floated on Spanish waters, and the official mind needed time to consider. That oracle, after weeks of cogitation, ordered the removal of the suspicious craft from the obscure port of Bonanza to the fuller light that plays on the custom-house at Seville. There, after more weeks of delay, it was decided that the white-painted six-foot barrel was "an arm of war," that "the combination of boat and gun savoured of the mechanism of war," and, finally, that "the boat could not be permitted to pa.s.s the customs until it had been registered at the Admiralty." Thus our _Boadicea_ joined the Imperial Navy of Spain.

Seven months elapsed whilst these difficulties were in process of solution, and ere they were smoothed away (as difficulties in Spain, or elsewhere, do dissolve under prudent treatment), and the _Boadicea_ set free to navigate the marismas, the season had pa.s.sed and the migrant fowl had returned to the north.

The following autumn, however, it at once became apparent that the venture was a failure. No wildfowl would tolerate her presence within half-a-mile. No sooner had her low snake-like form crept clear of fringing covert than the broad _lucio_ in front was in seething tumult, every duck within sight had sprung on wing. Naturally we tried every known plan, but all in vain. A system that is effective on the hara.s.sed and hard-shot estuaries of England utterly broke down on the desolate marismas of Spain. The apparent explanation is that whereas fowl at home are accustomed to see pa.s.sing craft of many kinds, and perhaps mistake the low-lying gunboat for a larger vessel far away; here no craft of any sort navigate the marisma, or should the box-shape _cajones_ of native gunners be so cla.s.sed, they are at once recognised as wholly and solely hostile.[63]

One plan remained by which the big gun might be brought to bear upon the larger bodies of fowl: concealing the boat among sedges at some point where ducks had been observed to a.s.semble _within reach_ of such covert.

That, however, to begin with, was most uncertain--the only certainty was that enormous drafts on patience would be required; and, after all, it forms no part of the system of wildfowling afloat and lacks the joys and glories of that pursuit.

WILD SWANS IN SPAIN

Since meeting with four hoopers in February 1891, as recorded in _Wild Spain_, we had neither seen nor heard of wild swans in Southern Spain till February of the present year, 1910, when H.R.H. the Duke of Orleans kindly informed us that he had succeeded in shooting one of a pair met with in his marismas of Villamanrique. It proved to be an adult male of Bewick's swan--the first occurrence of that species that has been recorded in Spain.

CHAPTER x.x.xVIII

THE "CORROS," OR Ma.s.sING OF WILDFOWL IN SPRING FOR THEIR NORTHERN MIGRATION

The withdrawal of the wildfowl at the vernal equinox affords an unequalled scenic display. It forms, moreover, one of those rare revelations of her inner working that Nature but seldom allows to man.

Her operations, as a rule, are essentially secretive. A little may be revealed, the bulk must be inferred. Here, for once, a vast revolution is performed in open daylight, _coram populo_--that is, if the authors and a handful of Spanish fowlers be accepted as representative, since no other witness is present at these scenes enacted in remote watery wilderness.

Up to mid-February the daily life of the marisma continues as already described. From that date a new movement becomes perceptible--the seasonal redistribution. Daily there withdraw northward bands and detachments counting into thousands apiece. But no vacancy occurs since their places are simultaneously filled by corresponding arrivals from beyond the Mediterranean.

It is at this precise epoch that there occurs the phenomenon of which we have spoken.

Towards the close of February, dependent on the moon, a marked climatic change takes place. A period of sudden heat usually sets in--a sequence of warm sunny days, breathless, and at noontide almost suffocating. But each afternoon with flowing tide there arises from the sea a S. W.

breeze, gentle at first and uncertain but gaining strength with the rising flood.

Already, shortly before this change, the duck-tribes had partially relaxed their full mid-winter activities--owing to abundant spring growths of food-plants, had become more sedentary; if not sluggish, at least reluctant to move. After the brief morning-flight not a wing stirred. But now, scan the mirror-like surface of some great _lucio_ and you will recognise a new movement distinct and dissimilar from regular hibernal habit. There float within sight (and the same is happening at a score of places beyond sight) not only the usual loose flotillas, but three, four, or five concrete a.s.semblages of densely ma.s.sed fowl whose appearance the slightest scrutiny will differentiate from the others. These are not sitting quiescent. The binoculars disclose a scene of perpetual motion, well-nigh of riot--one might be regarding a feathered faction-fight. Hundreds of units fight, splash, and chase, or throw up water with beating wings till surf and spray half conceals the seething crowd. That flicker of pinions and flying foam are, moreover, accompanied by a chorus of myriad notes--a babel of twirling sound blended in rising and falling cadences, comparable only to the distant roar of some mighty city. A more singular spectacle we have not encountered.

Inquiry from one's companion elicits the reply that these a.s.semblages are _hechando corros para irse_ (literally, "forming choruses preparatory to departure")--an expression which conveyed no more significance to us than it can to the reader.[64] We decided to return at daybreak to see this thing through, and after watching the phenomenon a score of times can now explain it.

During the morning hours there are established focal points whereat a.s.semble those units already affected by the emigrant furor. These (at first, perhaps, but a score or two) rapidly increase in numbers till each focus becomes the nucleus of a corro. The seasonal infection spreads, and as its influence impregnates the surrounding ma.s.ses, these, singly or in scores or hundreds as the pa.s.sion seizes them, hasten to join one or other of the mobilising army-corps. Within an hour or two the insignificant original nucleus has developed into a vast host all in a ferment of agitation, and being constantly reinforced by buzzing swarms of recruits from without.

All this procedure, remember, has been taking place during the blazing noontide heat. Now the hour is 2 P.M., and the first gentle breath of the daily sea-breeze--the _viento de la mar_--is becoming perceptible.

This breeze springs from the S. W., and let us here admit that, being fowlers as well as naturalists, our observance of the phenomenon has usually been carried out upon a _lucio_ which happens to terminate towards the N. E. in a long narrow bight fringed by tall reeds and bulrush, where, concealed in friendly covert, we can continue the observation while glancing along the barrel of a punt-gun. That secondary fact is merely incidental and, it so happens, facilitates the main object.

A mile to windward three such armies are mobilising separately within the scope of our view; and now the gentle force of that sea-breeze begins to impel those unconscious hosts, too preoccupied with all-absorbing pa.s.sion to notice detail, directly towards the point whereat we lie concealed.

[Ill.u.s.tration: REED-BUNTING

A winter visitor to the marismas.]

By this time the sun has three or four hours of declension and the thin dark line representing thousands of surging atoms has drifted down to within 200 yards. We can study at short range an amazing phenomenon. In weird exuberance they fight and flirt, chase, cherish, and flap till churned water flies in foam and a discordant roar of sibilant sound fills to the zenith the voids of s.p.a.ce. The volume of voices defies description since these a.s.sembling mult.i.tudes belong to no single species, but include a promiscuous agglomeration of all that care to enlist, and each adds its own distinctive element to the general uproar.[65] Around the floating host new-comers buzz like swarming bees, each seeking some spot to wedge itself into the crowd.

To-night the main _corro_ that we had been awaiting drifted past our front a trifle beyond effective range. The two that followed both "took the ground" and remained stationary, away to the right. The chance of making a great shot had failed; but we were content to watch the phenomenon to its finish.

Now the sun dips. The western sky is filled with golden glory; in twenty short minutes darkness will have enveloped the earth. Then in a moment, as by word of command, silence, sudden and impressive, reigns where just before that torrential babel had raged. Such, now, is the stilly silence that by comparison the pipe of a pa.s.sing redshank sounds well-nigh scandalous! A few seconds pa.s.s. Then, dominated by a single impulse, the concentrated ma.s.s on our front rises simultaneously on wing. The spell of silence is broken; the roar of pinions reverberates far and wide.

They're off--bound for Siberia!

Yet unperplexed as though one spirit swayed Their indefatigable flight.

Holding the same ma.s.sed formation, the fowl in three or four broadening circles quickly attain a considerable alt.i.tude--say 100 yards--and then head away on their course, _ALWAYS_ (so far as they remain visible) to the _SOUTH-EAST_--diametrically opposite to the direction one would expect. As in deepening darkness we set forth on our homeward voyage, the heaven above pulsates at intervals with the beating of wings as yet more north-bound _corros_ pa.s.s overhead.

Certain notable facts are observable in this vernal exodus. For upwards of twelve hours prior to departure the outgoing fowl take no food. That period is devoted exclusively to preparation and overhaul, _and_ to pairing. Plumage is preened and dressed till each unit is spick and span, speckless, and not a feather misplaced. All, moreover, are absolutely empty--in best and lightest travelling trim.

When ducks are _acorrados_--that is, formed into _corros_ (the term is used thus in verb-form)--their normal watchfulness is relaxed. All thought and energy are concentrated on the impending event. Hence, at these periods they are apt to fall an easier prey to the fowler and on wholesale lines. The native gunners with their trained _cabresto_-ponies sometimes unite and enormous totals are secured as the result of a single joint broadside. The fowl thus obtained afford proof of the facts just stated, being all absolutely empty; besides which many different species will be killed at the one shot.[66] These men also state that the ducks start already paired and flying side by side; this, they say, explains the ferment and commotion of the previous hours--courting and sorting. Adult ducks, as previously indicated (p. 110), apparently pair for life; but since some species (such as wigeon) take at least two years to gain maturity, it is probable that the s.e.xual phenomena which are so conspicuous in the _corros_ represent the first pairing of the newly adult two-year-olds.

The most favourable time for the a.s.sembling of corros is on those days when great heat and calm at midday is succeeded towards evening by an extra strong sea-breeze. On such occasions very large numbers will leave between sundown and dark. Northerly winds will almost absolutely arrest the exodus.

For the season of 1900-1901 our game-books showed a total of 4849 wildfowl (4674 ducks and 175 geese)--a record for which we were good-humouredly taken to task by our venerable friend the late Canon Tristram, who thought it looked excessive. The figures certainly are big, but the next entry in the book reads:--

_March 15._--This evening between fifty and seventy _corros_ left within half an hour--say 50,000 to 70,000 ducks. Next morning the marisma appeared as full as ever.

Our toll of 5000 seemed by comparison but as a drop in the bucket!

CHAPTER x.x.xIX

SPRING-TIME IN THE MARISMAS

BIRD-LIFE IN A DRY SEASON

Bird-life in the Spanish marisma--in spring no less than in winter--presents spectacles of such abounding variety as can nowhere in Europe be surpa.s.sed. In the Arctic are vaster aggregations, but these, comprising, say, only half-a-dozen species, are less attractive. It is the infinite kaleidoscopic succession of graceful and dissimilar forms that hour by hour flash on one's sight--in a word, it is variety that lends abiding charm to our Spanish bird-world.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GREY PLOVER (MAY)]

These scenes have already been described--we have ourselves described them in detail, and do not propose to recapitulate, alluring though the subject be.

Here we purpose depicting bird-life under undescribed conditions--in a spring when, by reason of exceptional drought, the myriad marsh-dwellers find themselves entirely at fault. Winging their seasonal way from Africa, to seek the seclusion of reed-girt pools and their accustomed league-long swamps and shallows, they found instead a calcined plain, no drop of water remaining, plant-life either prematurely parched or pulverised beneath a fiery sun. Watching the arrival of the advance-guard in early spring, one wondered what the bewildered hosts would do next, how they would face this fresh freak of nature.

The marismas, it should be explained, normally dry every summer, however wet the previous winter may have been. Though the great _lucios_ stood five feet deep in February, yet the deepest will be stone-dry by midsummer or, at latest, by St. Jago (July 24). Cattle and the wild-game can then only drink at the narrowed pools where permanent water, however exiguous, oozes forth--or the cattle from wells. In normal years, however, the marsh-birds have already reared their broods before these dates.

But in years of drought--what resource have they, where can they find a subst.i.tute for their sun-destroyed and desolate _incunabula_? Many (the waders in particular) instinctively prognosticate a drought; few, comparatively, either come or remain--those that come pa.s.s on. Even such birds as breed on permanent deep-water lakes (such, for example, as the smaller herons, egrets, and ibises) perceive in advance that, although they may have water a.s.sured, there will neither be sufficient covert, later on, to conceal their nurseries nor food for the rearing of their young. The erewhiles teeming heronries are abandoned.

Never within forty years has there occurred a drier season than this last, 1909-10. Incidentally we may remark that most of the previous spring-tides that we had expressly devoted to the marisma had been years of excessive rainfall, years when flamingoes nested abundantly--an unfailing index. Such was 1872, for example, 1879, and 1883; again, in April 1891, we remember our gunning-punt, caught in a squall, sinking beneath us in quite three feet of water though barely a mile from sh.o.r.e.

These are the seasons when (as described in _Wild Spain_) one sees the waterfowl in their fullest abundance. On the present occasion (1910) we were to witness converse conditions. Throughout the preceding winter the fountains of heaven had been stayed, nor did the advent of spring bring one hour of rain. By mid-March the marisma was practically waterless--a fortnight later, sunbaked hard as bricks. Where now were the marsh-birds? In April or May you could ride a long day over arid mud-flats and never see a wing, bar, in the latter month, a few Kentish plovers and fluttering pratincoles[67]--add a band or two of croaking sand-grouse (_Pterocles alchata_) pa.s.sing in the high heavens. Where had the exiled myriads gone? No man can answer.

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.