Unexplored Spain Part 45

Within an easy half-day's ride from X. lie the cliffs of Chipipi, rising in crenellated tiers from the winding river at their base. It is a lovely May morning. Doves in dozens dash away as we ride through groves of white poplars, and the soft air is filled with their murmurous chorus; the bush-clad banks are vocal with the song of orioles and nightingales, cuckoos, and a score of warblers--Cetti's and orphean, Sardinian, polyglotta, Bonelli's. The handsome rufous warbler, though not much of a songster, is everywhere conspicuous, flirting a boldly-barred, fan-shaped tail that catches one's eye. There are woodchats, serins, hoopoes; azure-blue rollers squawk, and brilliant bee-eaters poise and chatter overhead--their nest-burrows perforate the river-bank like a sand-martins' colony. On willow-clad eyots nest lesser ring-dotterels and otters bask; while in the shaded depths beneath the fringing osiers lurk barbel intent to dash at belated gra.s.shopper or cricket.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SAVI'S WARBLER (_Sylcia savii_)

A spring-migrant, common but very local. Has eggs by mid-April.]

In a thick lentiscos is the nest of a great grey shrike, and while we watch, its owner flies up carrying a lizard in her beak. Half an hour later we see a second shrike, with falcon-like dash, capture another lizard basking in a sunny cranny among the rocks--no mean performance that. There are snakes here also; one we killed, a coluber, on March 31, was 5-1/2 feet long and contained two rabbits swallowed whole and head first--one partly digested. Another snake, quite small, struck us as being something new; him we bottled in spirit and despatched to the British Museum. Presently came the reply, thanking us for a "Lizard, _Bla.n.u.s cinereus_." Lizard? Well, we learnt a lesson. There are limbless lizards, and this was one--the subterranean amphisbaena; our British blindworm (_Anguis fragilis_) is another, and that also we did not know before. There are curious reptiles here in Spain--the chameleon, for example. The lobe-footed gecko, _Salamanquesa_ in Spanish, haunts sunny rocks where insects abound. But he carries war into the enemy's camp, invading (not singly, but in force) the wild-bees' nests. A Spanish bee-keeper gravely a.s.sured us that the cold-blooded gecko does this thing expressly to enjoy the sensation of being stung in twenty places at once! Here in a shady glade lie strewn broadcast the wings of b.u.t.terflies--examine very closely the bush above, and presently an iris-less eye, expressionless as a grey pearl, will meet your own. That is a praying mantis (or _Santa Teresa_ in Spanish), a practical insect but no aesthete, since he devours the ugly body and casts aside the beauteous wings!--see his portrait at p. 87. Among b.u.t.terflies we counted here the scarce swallowtail, _Thas polyxena_ (hatching out on April 3), _Vanessa polychloros_, a big fritillary with blood-red under-surface to its fore-wings (_Argynnis maia_, Cramer), _Euchloebelia_ (March) and the curious insect figured alongside, we know not what it is.[69]

[Ill.u.s.tration]

For more than thirty years within our knowledge (and probably for centuries before) these cliffs have formed a home of Bonelli's eagle.

Two huge stick-built nests stand out in visible projection from crevices in the crag, some forty yards apart. To-day (April 3) the occupied eyrie contained a down-clad eaglet, four partridges, and half a rabbit, besides a partridge's egg, intact, and sundry sc.r.a.ps of flesh, all quite fresh. The nest was lined with green olive-twigs; swarms of carrion-flies buzzed around, and a great tortoisesh.e.l.l b.u.t.terfly alit on its edge while we were yet inside. The parent eagles soared overhead, the female carrying a half rabbit, which, in her impatience, she presently commenced to devour, the pair perching on a dead ilex, and affording us this sketch and another inserted at p. 26. Her white breast shone in the sun with a satin-like sheen.

Within sight (though fifteen miles away) is another eyrie of this species--the alternative nests not ten feet apart, merely a projecting b.u.t.tress of rock separating the two vertical fissures in which they rest. This site is in a rock-stack standing out from the wooded slope of the sierra. The two eggs, slightly blotched with red, were laid in February.

The rough bush-clad hills above our cliff are preserved, and presently meeting the gamekeeper, we tried--(that daily toll of four partridges plus sundry rabbits had got on our consciences!)--to put in a word for our eagle-friends, a.s.suring him they did him service by destroying snakes and big lizards (which they don't). "Si, senor," he agreed, adding, "y los insectos!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: BONELLI'S EAGLES SOARING AROUND EYRIE

Note white patch in centre of back, between the wings.]

Farther along the cliff we found two nests of neophron, each containing two very handsome eggs. This bird makes a comfortable home, the foundation being of sticks, but with a warmly lined central saucer, bedecked with old bones, snakes' vertebrae, rabbit-skulls, and similar ornaments. The nests were on overhung shelves of the vertical crag, and (like those of the eagles) only accessible by rope. There lay a rat in one--and rather "high."

Remaining denizens of these crags we can but briefly name. A pair of eagle-owls had three young (fully fledged by June 10) in a deep rock-fissure; there were also ravens, many lesser kestrels, and a colony of genets.

III. OAK-WOOD AND SCRUB

Cistus and tree-heath, genista and purple heather that brushes your shoulder as you ride, studded with groves of cork-oak--such was our hunting-field. The reader's patience shall not be abused by a catalogue of ornithological fact. True, we were studying bird-problems, and at the moment the writer was endeavouring, amidst ten-foot scrub, to locate by its song, a nest of Polyglotta--or was it _Bonellii_?--when in the depths of osmunda fern was descried something _hairy_--it was a wild-boar!... Three hors.e.m.e.n armed with _garrochas_ come galloping through the bush--herdsmen rounding-up cattle? But this morning it is a _bull_ they are rounding-up; and a bull that had grown so savage and intractable that his life was forfeit. A crash in the brushwood and we stand face to face. Three minutes later that bull fell dead with two b.a.l.l.s in his body; but two others, less well aimed, had whistled past our ears. Those three minutes had been momentous--the choice, it had seemed, lay between horn and bullet. Bird-nesting in Spanish wilds has its serious side.

The afternoon was less eventful. Almost each islanded grove had yielded spoil. We need not specify spectacled, subalpine, and orphean warblers, woodp.e.c.k.e.rs, woodchats and grey shrikes, nightjars, owls, kestrels, and kites--some prizes demanding patient watching, others a strenuous climb.

The last hour had resulted in discovering a nest of booted eagle, two of black, and one of red kites, each with two eggs (the next tree held a nest of the latter containing a youngster near full grown). We had turned to ride homewards when, over a centenarian cork-oak on the horizon, we recognised (by their buoyant flight and white undersides) a pair of serpent-eagles. The grotesque old tree was half overthrown, and on its topmost limb was established the snake-eaters' eyrie, containing the usual single big white egg--this specimen, however, distinctly splashed with reddish brown. In the same tree were also breeding cushats and doves, a woodp.e.c.k.e.r with four eggs, and a swarm of bees who made things lively for the climber. One of to-day's climbs, by the way, had resulted incidentally in the capture of a family of dormice, _Lirones avellanos_ in Spanish, handsome creatures with immense whiskers and arrayed in contrasts of rich brown, black and white.

Half an hour later we descried the unmistakable eyrie of an imperial eagle--a platform of sticks that crowned the summit of a huge cork-oak, the more conspicuous since any projecting twigs that might interrupt the view are always broken off. The eagle, entirely black with white shoulders, only soared aloft when L. was already half-way up. The two handsome eggs we left, though they have since, presumably, added two more "detrimentals" to prey on our partridges. Eagles, so soon as adult, pair for life; but that condition may require several years for full attainment, and in the imperial eagle the adolescent period is pa.s.sed in a distinctive uniform of rich chestnut. So long ago as 1883, however, we discovered the singular fact that this species breeds while yet (apparently) "immature." That is, we have frequently found one of a nesting pair in the paler plumage described, while its mate gloried in the rich sable-black of maturity, as sketched on p. 31. This year (1910) we had come across such a couple--they had two eggs on March 15--the male being black, while his partner was parti-coloured. A curious incident had occurred at that nest; at dawn next morning a griffon vulture was discovered asleep close alongside the sitting eagle. But on the arrival of the husband a furious scene ensued! The intruder (whom we acquit of dishonourable intent) was set upon, hustled, and violently ejected from the tree--hurriedly and dishevelled he departed. But conjugal peace was soon restored, and presently the royal pair set out in company for a morning's hunting.

These resident birds-of-prey breed early. We have found the eagles' eggs by February 28, buzzards' on March 12, and red kites' on March 14.

This spring was remarkable for the numbers of hobbies that pa.s.sed north during May, sometimes in regular flocks. They often roosted in old kites' nests, and when disturbed therefrom misled us into a futile climb.

WHITE-TAILED OR SEA-EAGLE (_Haliaetos albicilla_).--This does not properly belong to the Spanish zone. We cannot find recorded a single authentic instance of its occurrence in that country, but can supply one ourselves.

In the early days of February 1898 we watched on several occasions an eagle (which at the time we took to be Bonelli's) wildly chasing the geese that are wont to a.s.semble in front of our shooting-lodge. Splendid spectacles these aerial hunts afforded. The selected goose, skilfully separated from his company, made a grand defence. Fast he flew and far, now low on water, now soaring upwards in widening circle; but all the time gaggling and protesting against the outrage in strident tones that we could hear a mile away. Never, so far as eyesight could reach, did the a.s.sailant make good his hold.

Months afterwards--it was before daybreak on December 28 (1898)--the authors lay awaiting the "early flight" of geese at the Puntal, hard by, when an eagle (whether the same or not) appeared from out the gloom, made a feint at No. 1's decoy-geese (made of wood), pa.s.sed on and fairly "stooped" at those of No. 2. A moment later the great bird-of-prey fell with resounding splash, and proved to be (so far as we know) the only sea-eagle ever shot in Spain--a female, weight 12-1/2 lbs., expanse just under 8 feet.

This is not the only instance in our experience of eagles hunting before the dawn. We recall several others. Apparently, if pressed by hunger, eagles start business early--almost as early as we do ourselves.

SPOTTED EAGLE (_Aquila naevia_).--This also, like the last, is scarcely a Spanish species; but a beautiful example, heavily spotted, was shot in September in the Pinar de San Fernando by our friend Mr. Osborne of Puerto Sta. Maria. It was one of a pair.

PEREGRINE AND PARTRIDGE.--CORRAL QUEMADO, _Jan. 27, 1909_. While posted on a mesembrianthemum-clad knoll during a big-game drive, troops of partridges kept streaming out from the covert behind. Their demeanour struck both me and the next gun posted on a knoll 200 yards away. Across the intervening glade, almost bare sand but for a stray tuft of rush or marram-gra.s.s, the partridge ran to and fro in a dazed sort of way, crouching flat as though terror-stricken, or standing upright, gazing stupidly in turn. None dared to fly, though some were so near they could not have failed to detect me. The mystery was solved when a peregrine swept close overhead and made feint after feint: yet not a partridge would rise. Well they knew that the falcon would not strike _on the ground_; but what a "soft job" it would have been for a goshawk or marsh-harrier! Presumably partridge discriminate between their winged enemies and in each case adapt defence to fit attack.

An interesting scene was terminated by a lynx trotting out by my neighbour, Sir Maurice de Bunsen, who might thus have been taken unawares; only amba.s.sadors are never believed to be so, and on this occasion the spotted diplomat certainly got the ball quite right, behind the shoulder.

MARSH-HARRIER (_Circus aeruginosus_).--Over dark wastes resound "duck-guns sullenly booming." Thereat from reed-bed and cane-brake awaken roosting harriers, quick to realise the import. It is long before their normal "hours of business," but these miss no chances, and soon the hidden gunner descries spectral forms drifting in the gloom--all intent to share his spoils. Watch the robbers' methods. In the deep a winged teal is making away, almost swash. The raptor feints again and again, following the cripple's subaquatic course; but he never attempts to strike till incessant diving has worn the victim out. Then--so soon as the luckless teal is compelled to tarry five seconds above water--instantly those terrible talons close like a rat-trap. Next comes a lively wigeon, merely wing-tipped; but the water here is shoal and the hawk dare not close. For the volume of mud and spray thrown up by those whirling pinions would drench his own plumage. The wigeon realises his advantage and sticks to the shallow--the raptor ever trying to force him to the deep. The end comes all the same, though the process of tiring-out occupies longer--sooner or later, down drop the yellow legs--there is a moment of strenuous struggle and the duck is lifted and borne ash.o.r.e. Should no land be near, the branches of a submerged samphire will serve for a dining-table. Within five minutes nought is left but empty skin and clean-picked bones.

Obviously any attempt to seek dead at a distance or to recover cripples is labour lost--once they drift, or swim, or dive, to the danger-radius instantly the chattel pa.s.ses to the rival "sphere of influence."

As early as February (and sometimes even in January) the abounding coots begin to lay. The marsh-harrier notes the date and becomes a determined oologist. Over the everlasting samphire-swamp resounds the reverberating cry of the crested coot, _Hoo, hoo, Hoo, hoo_, so strikingly human that one looks round to see who is signalling. Presently you hear the same cry, but wailing in different tone and temper. That is a coot defending hearth and home against the despoiler; and bravely is that defence maintained. With a gla.s.s, one sees the coot throw 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 a.s.sailant 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

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 th.o.r.n.y acacia. When shot, the bird dropped a yard or so, then clutching a bough with prehensile zyG.o.dactylic 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 Barrameda, December 19, 1909.

This cuckoo, like all its old-world congeners,[70] is parasitic in its domestic _menage_--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 quoted was at first at fault. For the great spotted cuckoo differs in one essential point from that "wandering voice" with which we are familiar at home. The latter deposits a single egg in casual nest of t.i.tlark, hedge-sparrow, wagtail--in short, of any small bird, regardless of the fact that its own egg may differ conspicuously from those of its selected foster-parent. The spotted cuckoo is more circ.u.mspect.

Everywhere it restricts the delegated duty to some member of the _Corvidae_,[71] and in Spain exclusively to the magpies. Moreover, whether by accident or evolution, the cuckoo has so admirably adapted the coloration of its own egg to resemble that of its victim, as to deceive even so cute a bird as the magpie. Earlier ornithologists (as above suggested) failed for a moment to distinguish the difference--it was, in fact, the zyG.o.dactylic foot of an unhatched embryo that first betrayed the secret (Tristram, _Ibis_, 1859). On close examination the cuckoo's eggs differ in their more elliptic form and granular surface; but, unless previously fore-warned and specially alert, no one would suspect that these were not magpies' eggs, any more than does the magpie itself.

The spotted cuckoo deposits two, three, and even four eggs in the _same_ magpie's nest, sometimes leaving the lawful owner's eggs undisturbed, in other cases removing all or part of them--we have noticed spilt yoke at the entrance. It would appear difficult, in these domed nests, for the young cuckoos to eject their pseudo-brothers and sisters; but this detail of their life-history remains, as yet, unsolved.

CROSSBILLS.--Nature delights in presenting phenomena which no tangible cause appears to warrant. Such were the thrice-repeated invasions of Europe by "Tartar hordes"--they were only sand-grouse--that occurred during the past century (in 1863, 1872, and 1888); and in 1909 an a.n.a.logous problem, though on minor scale, was offered by crossbills.

From north to extreme south of our Continent these small forest-dwellers precipitated themselves bodily westwards. This was in July. All the west-European countries, from Norway to Spain, recorded an unwonted irruption. In Andalucia (at Jerez) crossbills were first noticed about mid-July, and their appearance so impressed country-folk little accustomed to discriminate small birds, as to suggest to them the idea that the strangers must have fled from Morocco to avoid the fighting then raging around Melilla! But in Spain a further and anomalous complexity followed. For the Spanish specimens we sent home, on being submitted to Dr. Ernst Hartert, proved to belong to a purely Spanish subspecies--a race distinguishable by its weaker mandibles and other minor variations. Hence the movement in Spain had been purely internal, and it became difficult to suppose that (although simultaneous) it could have been predisposed and actuated by precisely the same motives as those which compelled a more extensive exodus farther north. Thus results the curious issue--that presumably different causes, operating over a wide geographical area, produced similar and simultaneous effects. These immigrant crossbills disappeared from Andalucia at the end of August.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CROSSBILLS, ADULT AND YOUNG (_Loxia curvirostra_.)

JEREZ, July 1910.]

Crossbills we used to observe in winter in our pine-forests of Donana; but owing to local causes they have now missed several years. Their migrations within Spain are rather on the vertical than the horizontal plane--that is, merely seasonal movements between the higher lands and the lower. In Spain, denuded of natural forest, the habitat of such birds is narrowly restricted. Hence their sudden appearance in new areas (such as this, at forestless Jerez) is at once conspicuous.

GLOSSY IBIS (_Plegadis falcinellus_).--Birds, as a rule, are strict geographists. They recognise fixed range-boundaries and abide thereby.

But exceptions occur, and an instance has been offered by the glossy ibis. This bird has always been a conspicuous member of the teeming _pajareras_, or mixed heronries, of our wooded swamps of Andalucia. But it was only as a spring-migrant that the ibis was known. It arrived in April and departed, after nesting, in September. A diluvial winter in 1907-8, however, apparently induced it to reconsider its "standing orders." Already, that autumn, the ibises had departed--as usual. But in December (the whole country meanwhile having been inundated) they suddenly reappeared. Small parties distributed themselves over the marismas, and with them came an unwonted profusion of other waders, stilts and curlews, whimbrels and G.o.dwits, the latter a month or two before their usual date. All availed the occasion to frequent far-inland spots, normally dry bush and forest, _nota quae sedes fuerat columbis_, and one saw flights of waders and even ducks, such as teal and shoveler, circling over flooded forest-glades.

The changed quarters evidently met with approval, for each succeeding year since then we have had the company of ibises _during winter_.

An immature ibis, shot January 30, otherwise in normal plumage, had the head and neck brownish grey with curlew-like striations.

SLENDER-BILLED CURLEW (_Numenius tenuirostris_).--Years ago we wrote in our wrath, moved thereto by the constant misuse of the term, that such a thing as a "rare bird" does not exist, save only in a relative sense. Go to its proper home, wherever that may be, and the supposed rarity is found abundant as its own utility and nature's balances permit. Should some lost wanderer straggle a few hundred miles thence, it is proclaimed a "rare bird."

Against this, our old mentor, Howard Saunders, wrote across the proof-sheet: "There ARE rare birds, some nearly extinct"; and the above species affords an admirable example of these exceptions to the general rule.

No one at present knows the true home of the slender-billed curlew, nor the points (if any) where it is common, nor where it breeds. In southern Spain it appears every year during February and at no other season; while even then its visits are confined to a few days and to certain limited areas. The photo at p. 250 shows a beautiful pair shot February 5, 1898. When met with, they are rather conspicuous birds, distinguishable from whimbrel by their paler colour--indeed, on rising, the "slender-bills" look almost white. A specially favoured haunt in the Coto Donana is the bare sandy flat in front of Martinazo.