Wild Spain Part 26

formed by the triple channel of that great river.

These "islands" comprise vast areas of level pasturage--in winter bare of herbage, almost dry mud, but by April, knee-deep in richest gra.s.s and vegetation, resonant with the "whit-ti-wit" of unnumbered quail. On these flowery plains are reared some of the choicest breeds of the fighting bull--those, for example, of the Marques del Saltillo--which may here be admired at leisure.

The first point in the life-history of these Bustards of the marisma is their semi-migratory character. We do not mean to infer more than that they are _locally_ migratory, shifting their ground according to season and food-supply, but not leaving the country or crossing any sea. Africa is the only country they could go to, but _Otis tarda_ appears to be unknown, or at any rate very scarce, in Morocco and Algeria. Their migrations are confined to Spanish territory. In the middle of May, while ibex-shooting, we have observed a flight of seven Bustards in the heart of the Sierra de Ronda, pa.s.sing high over those lofty peaks.

On these plains there are Bustard of one s.e.x _or_ the other (not always both) at all seasons. The males leave the pasturage for the corn in February and March, followed later by the females as the laying season approaches. Both s.e.xes are then seen in mixed bands as above described--two or three up to a dozen males in each band composed of five or six times that number of females, but _never_ in single pairs or a single male consorting with a female retinue.

Here also we have enjoyed watching, at sunrise, the imposing performances of the males--often five or six bands in view at once,[65]

but, as before, without detecting any specific action--nothing beyond "show."

The eggs are laid in the last week of April (we found two females, already sitting each on two eggs, on the 26th), and about mid-May the males disappear. To Africa they have gone, the local shooters aver; but this, we know, is not the case, and are far from sure that the missing males are not simply hidden amidst the vast stretches of corn, then near four feet high, pending their moult.

Bustards moult very severely, casting all quill-feathers (as wild geese do) almost simultaneously. Hence, at the end of May, they become for a time incapable of flight, and naturally, under such conditions, seek the utmost seclusion, perhaps deceiving people into the illusion that they had gone, when they are really simply in hiding, which the rank summer vegetation renders easy enough. After eggs are laid, the males certainly desert their mates entirely, forming themselves into bachelor coteries, and leaving to the female the entire burden of the nursery.

Bustards take two years or more to acquire maturity: the year-old males are hardly larger than adult females, possess neither ruff nor whiskers, and do not breed. They probably continue growing for three or four years, or even more. An old _barbon_, when winged and brought to bay, will turn and attack its aggressor, hissing savagely and uttering a low guttural bark, "Wuff! wuff!" Except on such occasions we have not heard any vocal sound from a Bustard; nor do they, when winged, ever attempt to escape by running.

Though the general habit of the Bustard is graminivorous--his food consisting of the green corn, both blades and shoots, of grain and green herbage of all kinds, yet in summer, when the corn is cut, he develops for a time a keenly carnivorous character, catching and swallowing whole the rats and mice which, at that season, swarm on the stubbled plain, as well as the young of ground-breeding birds, buntings, larks, &c. Nor is a reptile wholly despised--a small snake or green lizard is readily included in his menu, and at all seasons they are very fond of insects, especially gra.s.shoppers and locusts.

CHAPTER x.x.xI.

THE LITTLE BUSTARD.

(OTIS TETRAX.)

While the Great Bustard takes chief place amongst the game-birds of Europe, both as regards size and sporting qualities, his smaller relative, the Little Bustard--in Spanish, _Sison_--must certainly head the list of the wily and unapproachable.

Against the Great Bustard, watchful as he is, fair measures can successfully be brought to bear, but no skill that we know of--none, that is, of legitimate sporting kind--will avail against the _Sison_. We may at once cla.s.sify him as the most difficult of all game-birds to bring to bag. That he is frequently shot is no disproof of this a.s.sertion. The birds being abundant, it would be strange indeed if none fell "haphazard" to chance shots when the sportsman is in pursuit of other game.

The habits of the Little Bustard are, in general, much the same as those of the larger species. They frequent, in the main, the same ground; the young are reared amidst the security of the ripening corn; in autumn they form into packs or bands, and spend their days upon the open plain.

We have not, however, met with these birds on the dead-level plains, so attractive to the _Abutarda_, and their preference is undoubtedly for more undulated lands. We have observed them as far up as corn grows on the foothills of the sierra.

In the month of April the Little Bustards are _all paired_, differing in this respect from the free-loving (?) _Otis tarda_. The males have now acquired the banded throats, and indulge in love-antics, much after the fashion of the blackc.o.c.k. Far away on the prairie one's eye catches something white, which disappears and again appears. On focussing the field-gla.s.s upon the distant object it is seen to be a male _Sison_, which, with drooping wings and expanded tail, slowly revolves on his axis. Now he rises to full height, displaying all the white on his plumage; anon his breast seems depressed to earth, and all the while a strange bubbling note is uttered, monosyllabic, but repeated in rapid spondees.[66]

In vain one scans the surrounding ground to catch a glimpse of the female; she remains crouched among the scant growth of palmetto, or rough herbage, invisible: yet, we may presume, admiring the "play" of her lord.

Not yet have the sentiments of love overmastered those of self-preservation: hence an attempt to gain closer quarters will be unsuccessful, the male bird rising on clattering wing at three gunshots, his partner following soon after. He has not yet, moreover, attained the fullest beauty of his nuptial plumage. By the middle of May his banded throat, with its double gorget of black and white, has become distended like a jargonelle pear, the rich glossy-black plumes at the back long and hackle-like. At this period--end of May--the males may be secured by careful approach under the stalking-horse. And now the females, already beginning to lay, become, of course, tame enough.

The four olive-green eggs are deposited among the herbage at the end of May--four is the number we have seen in the few nests discovered--and a second clutch is, according to Mr. Saunders (who, we have found by experience, makes no statement unless he has good grounds for it), frequently laid in the latter part of July. The males, all through the tedious business of incubation, remain hard by, ever constant to their sitting partners, and not "packing" or deserting them, as is the wont of their less faithful cousins, _Otis tarda_. Not till the young are on the wing are the _Sisones_ seen again in packs. This marked difference of habit between congeneric species so closely allied as the two Bustards is very curious.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LITTLE BUSTARDS--MAY.]

Possessed of keen powers of eye and ear, combined with the strongest ideas of self-preservation all round, the Little Bustard is never--in a sporting season--surprised in covert. His favourite haunts are in rough country, where he has every opportunity of remaining concealed himself, while yet able to survey all that pa.s.ses for a wide radius around.

Rarely does one descry a band of these birds _on the ground_. The loud rattle of wings as a pack springs 200 yards away is usually the first intimation of their presence. If, by some lucky chance, they are seen on the ground, even then the tactics employed to secure the larger bustard, namely, by ambushing the guns in a half-circle on their front, and driving the birds towards them, seldom, very seldom, come off. The _Sisones_ almost invariably take flight, from some unexplained cause--their extreme shyness and acute senses of sight and hearing are the only explanation--before the guns and drivers have reached their respective points. Or, even if the pack is enclosed within the deadly circle, they will still sometimes manage to escape by springing up high in air, and pa.s.sing out at impossible alt.i.tudes.

During the fiery heats of summer these birds may be shot by the artifice of the bullock-cart--already described in the chapter on Great Bustard--or be exhausted by repeated flights; but neither of these plans possess the merits of really attractive sport, while the second involves hard work under a heat that few men can stand.

There are, however, times when the Little Bustard may be secured upon easier lines. Upon occasion, in autumn, they become so enamoured of certain spots, beguiled by the plentiful supply of grain scattered around the _eras_, or levelled threshing-grounds out in the open field, that, like greedy blackc.o.c.ks on a Northumbrian stubble, they "take a haunt" (_toman la querencia_), and allow themselves, evening after evening, to be surprised and shot. This, however, is not a regular habit as with the blackc.o.c.ks, but rather an exceptional case.

Standing, partially concealed by my horse, near one of these _eras_, on one occasion a band of Little Bustards pa.s.sed so near and in such close order that three brace fell to the two barrels. On another memorable autumn afternoon I bagged, under similar conditions, eight of these bustards, besides four of the larger kind, the former all shot as they flew in at dusk towards an open threshing-ground.

The sportsman on the plains is frequently apprised of a pa.s.sing band of Little Bustards by the peculiar hissing sound made by their wings in flight, different from that of any other bird, but most resembling the rustle of the Golden-eye; but they are rarely so confiding as to pa.s.s within shot. The birds seen in the markets are, however, obtained, in nine cases out of ten, at such chance moments.

In conclusion, we repeat, that whilst against every other game-bird we know there is some ordered plan of campaign available, yet all efforts to outmatch the astute _Sison_ are vain, and end in vexation of spirit.

He is a bird, as the Spanish put it, of very _unsympathetic_ nature ("muy antipatico") towards the fowler, and this is the more to be regretted as his flesh is of fine pheasant-like flavour.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER x.x.xII.

A WINTER CAMPAIGN IN DOnANA.

(NOVEMBER.)

On a bright November forenoon we embarked from the weed-girt jetty at Bonanza on a big falucha, manned by four sun-bronzed watermen, and in whose s.p.a.cious storage lay a pile of sporting impedimenta--guns and rifles, baggage, bedding, and the rest.

We were a party of eight--English and Spanish nationalities equally represented--and old acquaintances, a.s.sociated in many branches of sport. All had come some distance to the rendezvous--some from Seville and Madrid, two from England--to pa.s.s a couple of weeks at the historic preserves of Southern Spain, the Coto de Dona Ana. As the swarthy crew let fall their oars into the tide of Guadalquivir, all eyes turned eagerly to the opposite sh.o.r.es, so full of pleasant reminiscences. 'Tis pleasant, too, to know that as the moorings are cast loose we lose touch of the world and its civilization; we leave behind us post and telegram, thought and care, and, with them, perhaps, some measure of ease and luxury--from all these things the broad flood of Btis and leagues of trackless waste will now divide us; we are free to revert to primaeval savagery, and we greatly rejoice thereat. Amidst these happier thoughts arose just a qualm of speculation as to whether all the multifarious arrangements incidental to such campaigns had been duly fulfilled, and if we should find our people, horses and mules, awaiting us at the appointed tryst.

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

A SPANISH JUNGLE--THE ANGOSTURAS.

Page 348.]

The mid-day sun was now lighting up the scene after a morning of mist and rain; to the left lay the town of San Lucar, with its ancient castle looming above the white crenellated walls and s.p.a.cious bodegas, and the busy strand of Bonanza, celebrated by Cervantes in _La Il.u.s.tre Fregona_ as a rendezvous for ruffians, smugglers, and pirates. On the stream floated craft of many descriptions, from the London steamer receiving her cargo of manzanilla at the wharf to the falucha-rigged "ariels" and lumbering fishing-sloops--vessels not unlike the caravels in which, four centuries ago, Columbus set sail from the neighbouring port of Palos to discover a New World, when

"A Castilla y a Leon Nuevo Mundo dio Colon ."

[Ill.u.s.tration]

The river at this point, close to its confluence with the sea, has a width of two miles, but the long lateen-sail, bellying out before a gentle _poniente_, bore us rapidly to the silent strand, where our horses stood awaiting us under a giant pine. No short time was spent in landing baggage, for the falucha lay aground a stone's throw from the sh.o.r.e; but at length all was landed, stowed in the mule-packs, and we set out on the long ride.

It had been intended to have one "drive" this afternoon, but these delays, and the customary tardiness of Spanish trains and travel generally, frustrated this plan, and it was already dark ere the head of our cavalcade sighted the welcome light displayed from the turrets of the ancient shooting lodge of Donana. Though now in a state of partial ruin, the old Palacio still shows signs of former grandeur, and has been, in bygone days, a favourite sporting retreat for more than one Spanish king. As we approached its glimmering lights amidst the darkness of a November evening, the resonant _konk, konk! kerronk, kerronk!_ of the wild geese, the mournful cries of plover and curlew, and the startled splash of wild ducks, are evidence of its lonely marsh-girt site and prophetic of sport to come.

Around the pile of logs cheerily blazing in the s.p.a.cious hearth we gather, relieved to find that all the transport and commissariat arrangements had this time come off without a hitch--no slight matter where everything, from a lemon or a hen's egg to a portable bath, from a match to a mattress, has to be transported on mule-back the whole forty miles of rough country (and river) we had just travelled. Our Galician cook and steward, half sportsman, half Bohemian, had come on two days in advance, and strangers were agreeably surprised to find anything to eat--except perhaps stewed lynx or frica.s.seed flamingo--in this outer wilderness. Then, as we gathered round the blazing hearth, enjoying such coffee and _breva_ cigars as are only combined in Spain, the keepers come in with their reports--keepers of a different type to British ideals, Bartolo, Larrios, and Manolo, copper-skinned, pelt-clad and unkempt, and Trujillo, the _guarda mayor_, who enters with lordly salaam, his jacket hung on one great shoulder as on a peg--a picture of Cervantes' Quixote. These are four of the ten keepers who, from father to son, have occupied the posts on the property for generations.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Plate XL.

PALACIO DE DOnANA.

Page 350.]