Wild Spain Part 23

'Twere a long tale to tell of fruitless efforts: we never so much as saw our coveted prize hereabouts, and at length we left the kindly farmer's house. The pretty Anita who had waited on us, and who, though she never sat down in her master's presence, joined freely in the conversation, had, we observed, donned quite an extra stratum of _poudre d'amour_, or some such compound, upon her fair brown cheeks to bid _adios_ to the mad Ingles; but neither she nor hearty Francisco would hear of accepting any return for all the trouble of our visit. We had an idea, in the former case, that coquetry might have had something to do with Anita's refusal, but time forbade the solution of the question.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GRIFFON VULTURE. (A sketch in the Sierra.)]

Further explorations had no better result: in the forests of the Sierra de la Jarda were a good many roe and some pig, but we did not care to risk the uncertainty of a _batida_ all alone. Partridge are very scarce on all these hills, and no wonder, since every farmer keeps his pair of call-birds (_reclamos_). We had gently hinted to Francisco the unwisdom of shooting partridges to decoys in spring; but he insisted it did no harm, since _he only shot the c.o.c.ks_! A pair or two of partridges at long intervals were all we saw (two or three brace a day was the utmost we could bag as a rule), and these, with a few hares and a chance rabbit, are all the small game of the sierra. In the marshy valleys were flights of peewits (January), and the woods swarmed with thrushes, blackbirds, chaffinches, green and brown linnets, robins, a few redwings, and other common species. A striking bird among the dense scrub on the hillsides was the little Dartford warbler, a creature of such intensely tame and skulking habits, that it was impossible to get a shot beyond a few yards--which involved annihilation of so tiny an atom.

After another week's exploration, sleeping at the _chozas_ of goatherds, or in bat-haunted caves, and enduring much discomfort, we decided to give it up.[59] On the homeward journey we gave a day to the exploration of the Boca de la Foz, where on a former occasion we had had a shot at a Lammergeyer--a grey-brown immature bird; but here again we met with nothing but the ubiquitous vultures, and in the afternoon we had paid off our guides and were starting on the homeward ride, when Benitez pointed out a _pajaraco_ in the distance. At first the bird appeared an ordinary griffon, some of which were close by; but as it came overhead, there was no mistaking the outlines of the Lammergeyer. Slowly the magnificent bird wheeled and sailed overhead, and our eyes feasted on the object we would have given two little fingers to possess. For some minutes he treated us to a fine view at moderately short distance. The general contour and flight was far more vulturine and less falcon-like than we had expected. The wings seemed fully as heavy, broad, and square at the points as those of a griffon, but there was rather more curve at the elbow. A lightish spot near the tips of the quills, the rich tawny breast and white head, keenly turning from side to side, were very conspicuous from below; but the distinguishing characteristic of the bird is its tail. This is very long, and continues broadening out for half its length, thence narrowing down acutely to the sharp wedge-shaped tip.

Presently the bird appeared to enter some great crags--already hidden from view by an intervening bluff--and the hopes of a shot revived.

Benitez was protesting against the idea of spending another night here, with no food for man or beast, when the Lammergeyer solved the question by re-appearing, and after a few fine aerial evolutions, winged his way direct towards the distant sierras beyond Grazalema.

That night we reached the little _venta_ of the Parada del Valle: the landlord could hardly get over the curiosity of our wishing to wash before dinner, and for some minutes revolved like a swivel-mitrailleuse, expectorating all over the floor while pondering this thing in his mind.

"Ahora?" at last he inquired. "Si! ahora mismo!" we replied, when he went and brought a thing that looked like a tin plate, containing about a breakfast-cupful of water.

El Valle is a straggling little village situate in the mouth of one of the defiles leading into the mountains, and consists of a few low cottages and a single country-house--a rare thing in Spain--embowered amidst orange and olive-groves. The orange harvest was in full swing, and the villagers one and all busy gathering the golden fruit into heaps, and packing it upon mules for market; some also in the long wooden cases one sees about Covent Garden. The only sign-board in the little one-sided street displayed the words "Dentista y Sangrador"--the Spaniards, by the way, are strong believers in bleeding: it seems the one known remedy, efficacious for all the ills of the flesh, as the writer once learned by experience, when having had a slight sunstroke, he awoke to find a rural medico in the act of applying the lancet to his arm.

Before dawn we started for Jerez, and in a detached crag of the sierra we obtained a fine adult male golden eagle which had breakfasted early on a rabbit. Like most Spanish examples, this eagle was much splashed with white below, especially on the thighs. Shortly after, on a bare stretch of maize stubble, we rode fairly into a pack of little bustard, and though the gun was in the slings a quick shot secured three--one to the first barrel, and a brace, winged, to the second. A long skein of cranes came gaggling over as we breakfasted on the banks of Guadalete, and, pa.s.sing the Agredera, by evening the long ride was over, and we were once more amidst the grateful comforts of Jerez de la Frontera.

Only for a brief period, however, did these delay us, for on the following evening we set out on a night expedition to the marisma.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER XXVI.

THE HOME OF THE LAMMERGEYER.

Since the time of those earlier efforts to sc.r.a.pe an acquaintance with the Lammergeyer (some of which form the subject of the last chapter), we have at length enjoyed opportunities of observing this grand bird in its true home, and here add a short summary of these later experiences.

Broadly speaking, this bird may be said to exist in all the higher mountain regions of Spain; but, as a rule, in small and decreasing numbers. In the north, there are eyries in Guipuzcoa and Navarre, one or two within sight of the French frontier; others in the Cordilleras of Leon and the Asturias--the magnificent gorge known as the Desfiladero de la Deva, being an immemorial haunt. We have observed them in the great central sierras of Castile, and they are known (but probably do not breed) in the Guadarrama range, within sight of Madrid. Nowhere common, there are yet more sporadic pairs to be seen sweeping low on the steep brown mountain-sides of certain Andalucian and Estremenian sierras than anywhere else in Spain. Here, however, as elsewhere, their numbers are being yearly reduced by the deadly poison laid by hill-farmers for wolves, and, in some cases, expressly for the Lammergeyer itself; for, rightly or wrongly, the great bird bears an ill-repute, and being, moreover, during the breeding-season, of confiding disposition--more so than eagle or vulture--is easily killed at the nest.

The Gypaetus, like the n.o.ble eagles, is essentially a solitary bird, each pair (they remain paired for life) requiring a mountain region exclusively their own, and shunning the near propinquity of vultures and other large raptores. It is no doubt this trait of its character that explains its comparative absence from our "home" mountains round Ronda, and the failure of our search for it in that district; for the ramification of mountain-ranges which occupies that southernmost apex of Europe swarms with vultures, which crowd every crag and precipice in numbers quite unknown elsewhere. Such conditions are distasteful to the solitude-loving Lammergeyer.

Yet, while shunned as near neighbours, it appears certain that the vultures perform services of value to their n.o.bler congener. Their office consists in stripping the skeleton of flesh, and leaving prepared for the "quebranta-huesos" (bone-smasher) his much preferred _bonne-bouche_ of marrow-bones. Thus, while the respective haunts of the two species remain distinct, their hunting-areas must coincide.

The Lammergeyer disdains carrion; is never seen at those seething vulture-banquets which form so characteristic a spectacle in rural Spain; but he loves the _bones_, and his habit of carrying huge tibia and femora into the upper air, thence dropping them upon rocks, has been known since the days of aeschylus. Hence the fouler feeders are useful to him; he requires their a.s.sistance, but demands that they keep a respectful distance. His att.i.tude towards the vultures may be compared with that of certain high-souled anthropoids of human affinity, who utilize their humbler neighbours and cut them dead next day!

Thus it happens that while in a range of sierra inhabited by Griffons, the Lammergeyer will not be found, yet a pair of the latter usually have their eyrie at no great distance from the vulture-colony.[60]

During our ibex-shooting campaigns among the Mediterranean sierras, we frequently fell in with this species.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Plate x.x.xV.

LAMMERGEYER. A sketch from life in the Sierra Bermeja.

Page 308.]

It was almost the first bird seen in the Sierra Bermeja, where a superb adult pa.s.sed slowly along our line, carrying what appeared to be a live snake in his claws, some four feet of writhing reptile dangling beneath.

The Lammergeyer, by the way, like the eagle, carries everything in its claws, not in the beak. We were rather surprised at seeing this bird here, the local hunters having specially a.s.sured us that only "aguilas reales" bred in that sierra. This name, however, proved to be that _here_ applied to the Lammergeyer; its proper recipient, the Golden Eagle (a pair of which were nesting in a crag not far off) being known as "aguila negra."

Vultures, it may be mentioned, were chiefly remarkable by their absence in these mountains--one only saw a solitary Griffon at long intervals, and in that barren rocky-mountain region (afterwards mentioned), in which we found the Lammergeyer most numerous, vultures were seldom seen.

Yet _Buiteras_, "Griffonries," so to speak, existed at certain intervals, say, six or eight leagues apart, throughout the whole of those sierras.

This pair of Lammergeyers, which we enjoyed watching during some days, soon disclosed to us both the position of their present abode and also that of a former year, entering the latter crag almost as often as the then tenanted nursery.

Perched, as we were, a thousand feet above, it was a glorious ornithological spectacle to watch these grand birds sailing to and fro unsuspicious and unconscious of our presence, their lavender backs and outstretched pinions gleaming like silver in the sunshine. Slowly they would glide down the gorge till lost to sight around an angle; returning half an hour later, and pa.s.sing beneath our post, would circle for a minute or two round the rock-stack. Not a motion of those rigid pinions till close to the mouth of the eyrie, then the great wings closed, and the bird disappeared within its cave.

Both eyries were situate in similar positions--in abrupt stacks of rock which protruded from the rugged mountain slope, but _both_ quite _low_ down, almost at the bottom of the 3,000-foot gorge across which the two nests faced each other. The Lammergeyer, we have now ascertained, does _not_ breed, as we had expected, in those more stupendous precipices beloved of _Aquila bonelli_, and whose height dwarfs even an eagle to the similitude of the homely kestrel; but rather, either in rock-stacks such as those (often not 100 feet high) which flank the lower _gargantas_, or corries of the sierra, or in those generally loftier crags which often belt the base of each individual mountain.

The actual site of the nest is a small cave--rather than a crevice--and a huge ma.s.s of material, the acc.u.mulation of years, usually covers the whole floor. In one case, not less than a cart-load of sticks, branches, and twigs of cistus and heath had been collected, covering a circular s.p.a.ce some six feet in diameter by two in depth. The present nest was hardly so large, and was completed with dead vine-branches, the prunings of the previous autumn;--and contained, besides an old _alparagata_, or hempen sandal, several cows' hoofs, and the dried leg and foot of a wild-goat. There was, however, no carrion about, nor any very offensive smell, such as would have characterized the home of a vulture.

To an outsider, the feat of scaling even a 100-foot crag, when fairly sheer, seems no easy undertaking; but our two mountain-bred lads made light work of it, one escalading the Lammergeyer's fortress from below, the other from above (which proved the easier way), and actually meeting in the eyrie. Some goatherds, hearing of our wish to secure a "quebranta-huesos," had removed the single young bird an hour or two previously. This grotesque and most uncouth fledgeling was then (at end of March) about the size of a turkey, covered with grey-white down, and with beak and crop so disproportionately heavy that a rec.u.mbent position appeared almost a necessity. The youngster kept up a constant querulous whistle when visited, and consumed, we were told, four pounds of meat daily. A month later the feathers were beginning to show through the down, and the daily consumption of meat had doubled.

In a remote region of the Sierra Nevada, during the spring of 1891, the writer visited several eyries of the Lammergeyer--each nest, in construction and situation, resembling those already described, but the season (April) was too late to secure eggs, this species breeding very early--in January. The young--usually only one, though two eggs are often laid--at this season were about one-third feathered. These nests were in the midst of a peculiarly barren and rocky district of the great Eastern Sierras, the precise locality of which it may be as well to leave unwritten. Two of the eyries were in low belts of protruding rock which broke the steep slope of the sierra, a third in a detached crag about 150 feet in height. The latter, however, was easily accessible (by rope) from above. The Lammergeyer, when breeding, is less cautious than eagle or vulture, sitting close, even while preparations for an a.s.sault on its stronghold are being made close at hand.

The adults measure from 8 feet 6 inches to 9 feet in expanse of wing, and the wedge-shaped white head with its bristly beard and scarlet eyelids, its cat-like irides, and the black bands that pa.s.s through the eye, give the bird a peculiarly ferocious aspect. When on the wing, as Prince Rudolph remarks, these features, together with the long rigid wings, cuneate tail, and the mixture of h.o.a.ry grey, black, and bright yellow in its plumage, distinguish the Gypaetus at a glance from any other living creature, and lend it a strange, almost a dragon-like appearance.

Its claws, though less acutely hooked than those of the eagle, are sharp and powerful weapons--quite different to the worn and blunted claws of vultures, though the central toe in _both_ is much longer than the two outside ones.

The industry of the peasantry of these wild regions of Nevada deserves a pa.s.sing remark. As high as rye or other crops will grow, almost every foot of available ground is brought under cultivation. Precipitous, stony slopes are terraced with a perseverance that rivals, though on a smaller scale, the vineyards of Alto Douro, elsewhere described.

Scanning the heights with a field-gla.s.s, one descries a man working on some jutting point or tiny patch of tillage so steep that a stone would hardly lie. All these folk, towards nightfall, betake themselves to the quaint but unsavoury hamlets that hang on some ridge of the sierra--and not the human folk only, but the pigs, the goats, and the donkeys forbye--each beast making straight for its own abode. Along each rock-paved street at dusk they come at a run, looking neither to right nor left till each beast bolts, without ceremony, into its own abode.

Some five-and-twenty of the larger "domestic" animals (I take no count of dogs, hens, or the like) shared with me and sundry natives our scanty lodgment, whence at earliest dawn the braying of a.s.ses, c.o.c.k-crowing, and porcine squalls, drove us betimes of a morning.

[Ill.u.s.tration: OUR QUARTERS AT QUENTAR DEL RIO.]

In one hill-village, there being no _posada_, we put up in the outhouse of a mill: but, amidst sacks of grain and malodorous mules, we pa.s.sed a lively evening, for one by one the serranos dropped in to chat with the "Ingleses"; the wine-skin was replenished, and Manuel struck up some s.n.a.t.c.hes of "Don Rodrigo de Bivar" and songs of the ancient chivalry.

Maiden figures soon flitted in the darkness outside, and coyly accepting an invitation to enter, our barn resounded with the music of castanet and guitar, while lissom forms and light fandango graced its erewhiles unlovely floor.

Next morning our guide, Manolo Osorio Garcia, was drunk--a most unusual thing in Spain! We left him to sleep off his _borachera_, and were glad to get rid of him, for--again, most unusual--he was constantly pestering not only for wine, but for boots, gunpowder, and other things--requests that, when luggage is reduced to a minimum, cannot be conveniently complied with.

Despite their industry there is, nevertheless, woful poverty amid the peasants of Nevada. Whole tribes live in caves and excavations in the mountain-sides--filthy holes, shared, of course, by the beasts, and devoid of the remotest approach to comfort or decency. Even in the larger villages the ordinary sanitary precautions are utterly neglected, disease is frequent, and death sweeps in broad swathes. Early one morning Manuel came in to tell us that in the hamlet, at which we had arrived the previous night, "the people were dying by dozens each day of small-pox, that ten children had already succ.u.mbed that morning, and that he was very ill himself." We accordingly left at once, meeting in the pa.s.s above the village a drove of several hundred black pigs. Our horses planted their feet firmly on the rocks, and for some minutes we stood encompa.s.sed in a torrent of swine, which raced and jostled beneath us.

In Spain the Gypaetus is yearly decreasing in numbers. A decade ago they were fairly numerous in the vast area of rock mountains which stretches between Granada and Jaen. To-day a week may be spent in that district without so much as even a distant view of this grand bird. The reason is unquestionably the use of poison (_veneno_), which is laid out broadcast by the goatherds for the special benefit of wolves, but which is equally fatal to the Lammergeyer.

Wolves, by the way, during the severe winter of 1890-1, were particularly numerous and destructive in the Sierra Nevada, descending to lower levels than usual, demolishing whole flocks, and even attacking human beings when found alone. In one instance all that could be found of a poor goatherd, who had been missing for some weeks, was his boots!

This brings us again to the question of the habits of the Gypaetus, and especially of its food. Some naturalists seem inclined to hold that the bird is only a _vulture_, subsisting on carrion, and fearing to attack any living prey. The goatherds of Nevada, however (rightly or wrongly), do not share this view. One kindly old hill-farmer, at whose lonely cottage we spent a couple of nights, a.s.sured us that the "quebrantones,"

as he called them, were as destructive to his new-born kids in spring-time as the wolves themselves, and added that he laid out the _veneno_ in special spots for each of his enemies. Only three days before, he a.s.serted with vehement emphasis, he had witnessed a Lammergeyer strike down a week-old kid, its mate meanwhile driving off the dam. So intent was the bird on demolishing its victim that the farmer approached within a few yards and threw his stick at it as it rose. The kid, however, was dead. He insisted that the robber was no Golden Eagle (which he knew well), but "_de los Barbudos malditos!_"--one of those accursed bearded fellows!

Again, on a single _majada_, or goat-breeding establishment, in Estremadura, we were told that forty odd kids had been killed that spring by one pair of Lammergeyers before the enraged tenant was able to shoot them. We saw one of the birds--a superb adult Gypaetus.

Here also is the evidence of the veteran _cazador_, Manuel de la Torre, a man of keen observation and intelligence, and the best field-naturalist we have met in Spain: "The Lammergeyer seeks far and wide for prey, preferring bones to anything else, but also eating carrion on necessity; and in spring, when it has young, kills many young sheep and goats, both wild and tame. I have seen it take snakes and other reptiles, and the largest and finest I ever shot (now in Madrid Museum) was in the act of eating a rabbit I had just seen it kill. This was in the Pardo. A dead hare or rabbit is the best bait to attract the Gypaetus to the gun; it regularly hunts both. The Neophron I have never seen take any living thing; it only eats carrion, garbage, and offal, but I have found dead snakes in its nests. The Gypaetus, like the vultures and some eagles, feed their young for some months on half-digested food, disgorged from their own crops." This is the evidence of one who has seen more of the Lammergeyer than any other living naturalist, and it is for this reason that, contrary to our practice, we have accepted what may be called hearsay evidence.

It is for these reasons that we have retained the distinctive t.i.tle of Lammergeyer, now generally discarded in favour--on mistaken grounds, we think--of the name of "Bearded Vulture." Independently of the fact that our subject is no more a vulture than it is an eagle, surely a distinctive name is preferable to further iteration of the wearisome monotony--ay, poverty--of ornithological nomenclature. Have we not run to death those compound epithets, "long-legged," "black-tailed,"

"white-shouldered," and the like? Even on the a.s.sumption--not proven in this case--that the word conveys an inference not strictly accurate, there are precedents for its retention, _e.g._, Caprimulgus, Goatsucker, Nycticorax, Bernicla, the Bernacle Goose, Oyster-catcher, and many more.

We hesitate to accept such subst.i.tutes as Tures and Bearded Vulture for the time-honoured designations of Ibex and Lammergeyer.