CHAPTER IX.

AMONG THE FLAMINGOES.

NOTES ON THEIR HAUNTS AND HABITS, AND THE DISCOVERY OF THEIR "INCUNABULA."

Though Flamingoes are found in many of the countries bordering on the Mediterranean, and their rosy battalions are familiar to Eastern travellers through Egypt and the Suez Canal, yet their mode of nesting, and especially the manner in which birds of so singular a form could dispose of their extremely long legs while incubating, has remained an unsettled question. Till within the last decade, in default of more recent observations, sundry ancient fables have passed current. Dampier described the nests of flamingoes seen by him two hundred years ago--in September, 1683--on one of the Cape de Verde Islands, as being high conical mounds of mud upon which the female sat astride ("Voyages," i., pp. 70, 71); and for two centuries this cavalier position has been accepted as history, no further observations having been made, though flamingoes have nested irregularly in various parts of Europe--even in France (in the marshy Camargue, the delta of the Rhone), and in Southern Spain.

In the latter country several efforts have been made by naturalists to obtain more precise knowledge of the breeding habits of the flamingo, especially by Lord Lilford and Mr. Howard Saunders, but, from various causes, without definite results. "The heat on those plains in June, when the flamingoes are said to nest," wrote the latter, "is something tropical, and it is no joke to wander for days over a district as large as our 'Eastern Counties,' on the _chance_ of stumbling upon a colony of flamingoes somewhere or other." The element of chance, however, is a potent factor, and it eventually fell to the writer's lot to discover that for which other and better naturalists had sought in vain. The following is a narrative of our explorations in the marisma in the spring of 1883:--

The first encounter with flamingoes that year had a somewhat ludicrous result: after riding all day across the wastes, we had arrived towards sunset within sight of our quarters for the night, when a herd of these birds was observed feeding in a reed-girt creek. They seemed unusually favourably placed for a stalk--for these wary fowl seldom approach within shot of the slightest covert; but on reaching the outermost rushes, the pack was seen to be at a hopeless range, and rose immediately on my appearance. To my surprise, a "treble A" wire-cartridge nevertheless dropped four--three falling direct to the shot, and a fourth "towering" and falling dead a little further out. One tall fellow was only winged, and seeing that he was walking right away from me, and getting into deeper water, Felipe took my horse and rode round to cut him out. Meanwhile the short twilight was over, and darkness overtook us some distance out in the dreary marisma. In the gloom I mistook the bearings, and only, after splashing about for a time that seemed eternal, managed to reach the shore, laden with three huge birds, wet through, hungry, and hopelessly lost. For a mile or two I struggled on through thorn and tangled brushwood, till at last, coming suddenly upon a herd of sleeping beasts--bulls, for all I could tell--I gave it up, and decided to weather out the night in the jungle, with the sand for a couch, and a flamingo for a pillow. Great was the relief, about midnight, to hear a distant shot; I responded with a fusillade, and shortly afterwards B----, with Felipe, and Trujillo's mighty frame loomed through the darkness, and the duress was at an end.

During the month of April we searched the marisma systematically for the breeding-places of the flamingoes: but though we explored a large area, riding many leagues in all directions from our base through mud and water, varying from a few inches to three or even four feet in depth, yet we could see, at this season, no sign of nests. Flamingoes there were in plenty, together with ducks, divers, waders, and many kinds of aquatic birds already described: but the water was still too deep--the mud-flats and new-born islets not sufficiently dried for purposes of nidification, and as far as we could see the only species which had actually commenced to lay were the purple herons, coots, Kentish plovers, peewits, and some others.

Of the flamingoes themselves we secured several more lovely specimens; during two mornings devoted to shooting them, we bagged eight, six adults in rich rosy plumage, and two immature. Flamingoes are always shy and watchful birds, and their great height gives them a commanding view of threatening dangers: but there are degrees in intensity of wildness, and despite the unquestionable difficulty of flamingo-shooting, we would certainly not place these long-necked birds in the first rank among impracticable wild-fowl. Wild geese, for example, many of the duck-tribe, and nearly all the larger raptores far exceed them in incessant vigilance and downright astuteness. Flamingoes, however, will not, as a rule, permit of approach by the ordinary Spanish method of the stalking-horse, or _cabresto_: while the treacherous pony is still two gunshots away, the warning croak of the sentries is given, and at once the whole herd start to walk away, opening out their ranks as they move off. The method we found most effective to secure them was by partially surrounding a herd with a line of mounted men, who rode far out beyond them and then drove them over our two guns, each concealed behind his horse and crouching knee-deep in water. Of all the dirty work that wild-fowling in its many forms necessitates, this flamingo-driving takes the palm. It is mud-larking pure and simple, man, horse, and gun alike encased in a clinging argillaceous covering like the street-Arab amphibians below London Bridge.

It is a fine sight to see a big flight of flamingoes, say five hundred, coming well in to the gun--_entrando bien á la escopeta!_ The whole sky is streaked with columns of strange forms, and the still air resounds with the babel of discordant croaks and cries. How wondrously they marshal those long uniform files, bird behind bird without break or confusion, and how precisely do those thousand black wing-points beat in rapid regular unison! Flamingoes are not "hard" birds: their feathers being loose and open, and the extremely long necks a specially vulnerable part, they may be brought down from a considerable height even with small shot. One evening, while collecting specimens of small birds on the open marsh, the writer killed a pretty right-and-left at flamingoes with No 6. Happening to see them on the wing a long way off, I lay down flat among the low samphire-scrub and presently had them (five) right overhead. Both these birds fell stone-dead. On another occasion, many years before, at the Veta Lengua, our four barrels, each loaded with nine treble-nesting slugs, brought down three fine flamingoes from a herd rising at upwards of 180 measured paces. But having obtained specimens, we did not further molest these singular birds.

Flamingoes were not the sole attraction: the desolate region around abounded with wild life, furred and feathered, and many a pleasant bye-day was put in among the "vermin." One morning we rode out to some distant thickets where a neighbouring herdsman--half peasant, half poacher--complained that a family of lynxes were working havoc among his kids. Our friend, a man of square iron-knit frame, with the eyes and claws of an eagle, rode before us, no less than eleven wire-haired _podencos_ (hunting-dogs) made fast to his saddle-bow by cords of twisted esparto. The first thicket tried held a lynx, which, disturbed by the _podencos_, bolted at speed right between us and rolled over with a dose of "treble A" about her lugs. From this one small _mancha_ the dogs put out, besides the lynx, several partridge and rabbits, a Montagu's harrier, and a pair of mallards! This lynx was a female, a full-grown and handsome example of _Felis pardina_, much infested (as are most of the scrub-haunting animals) with ticks, especially about the head: but it was not much more than half the size of an enormous male which we subsequently found. Unluckily, half our pack were then wasting their energies on a big boar, which, after trotting close up to where the writer stood, turned back with a valedictory grunt and disappeared. The rest of the pack had meanwhile driven the lynx to the outside of the thicket, where we had already viewed him and regarded his fate as sealed; when, with sudden fury, the big cat turned on his foes, and scattering the _podencos_ with some tremendous fore-arm blows, made good his escape to the fastnesses of the Algaida de la Pez.

Some years afterwards the writer killed a magnificent male lynx, one of the largest and most beautifully marked we have ever seen, at this _mancha_--probably the same beast.

These scrub-clad plains abounded with tall grey foxes (_Vulpes melanogaster_) and mongoose (_Herpestes widdringtoni_), with genets, badgers, and wild-cats, of all of which we shot specimens. Three wild-cats we bagged by moonlight, from screens placed to command an open glade where rabbits are wont to pursue nocturnal gambols. Waiting in ambush beneath the star-strewn heavens, in the silent brilliance of the southern night, no sound save the churring of nightjars, or the whistle of stone-curlew, broke the stillness: bats and small owls flicker in uncertain flight against the dark sky, and across the glade rabbits glide like phantoms: presently a larger shadow announces their deadly enemy, the _Gato montés_. Two of these wild-cats were males, large and powerful brutes, weighing 9½ and 10¼ lbs. respectively, and tinged with warm chestnut colours beneath. The big lynx we could not weigh, being beyond the limit of the spring-balance. He probably reached near half a hundredweight. But we must return to our flamingoes.

During the month of April, as already mentioned, all efforts to discover their breeding-places proved futile. It was clearly too early in the season, and the writer now lost nearly a week through a smart attack of ague, brought on by constant splashing about in comparatively cold water with a fierce sun always beating down on one's head. In May, however, we had better luck. Further to the eastward flamingoes had always been most numerous, and once or twice we observed signs, early in May, that looked like the first rude beginnings of architecture. We have already described the archipelago of islets that lay far towards the eastern shore, and on which we had found the rare gulls, and such a variety of waders and other aquatic birds breeding (p. 93), together with the immense numbers of flamingoes that lined the horizon. We must now return to those bird-islets, to the scene where we broke off at the end of