It boots not to tell of days when rain fell in sheets and an icy neblina swept the hills, shrouding their summits from view. A single ornithological remembrance shall be recorded—the abundance of certain northern-breeding species on the middle heights, especially common wheatears and skylarks. After watching these carefully, we were convinced by their actions (their song, courting, and fluttering flight) that both intended to nest here at 7000 feet, and dissection confirmed that view. Time alone prevented our settling the point; but a month later (say early in June) an ornithologist could easily verify the fact.
May the 1st broke bright and clear, not a cloud in the azure firmament. The songs of hoopoes, serins, and a cuckoo resounded hard by, and from our paneless window we watched three glorious rock-thrushes “displaying” before their sober mates—as sketched at p. 18. Within sight among the tumbled boulders were also a pair of blue thrushes, with a woodlark or two, several black-starts, and rock-buntings.
We bathed in an ice-cold burn with temperature little above freezing—at dawn, indeed, the backwaters were ice-bound. Then, mounted on a donkey, the writer alternately scrambled up the stony steeps or dragged the sure-footed beastie behind. The gentler slopes were fairly clad with yellow daffodil or narcissus, now just coming into bloom, and above 7000 feet we entered a zone of dwarf-arbutus and ilex-scrub. The warm sunshine brought out numerous butterflies—it seemed strange to see these frail creatures fluttering across open snows! Most of those recognised were tortoise-shells, rather paler than our own.
Alas, before noon the icy mists once more swept up. In a crevice among some rocks where we sought shelter at 8000 feet the skeleton of a wheatear attested the cruel conditions of bird-life—death by starvation. Here we separated, the writer going for a snow-scramble, following the dwindling Monachil to its source, where the nascent river trickles in triple streamlets down black rock-walls mantled by impending snow-fields. Here snow lay in scattered patches dotted with the resurgent unkillable “pincushion” gorse (Buphaurum spinosum) and a spiny broom that later develops a purple blossom, and separated by intervals where the melting mantle had left Mother Earth viscous and inchoate, heart-broken at the indignity of eight months in the arctic. Higher up the snow became continuous, but seamed by innumerable rills, each laughing and dancing as in delight at a new-found existence, or converging to join streams in buoyant exuberance. Some leapt forward through fringing margins of emerald moss; others ploughed sullen ways beneath an overhung snow-brae. But no chirp or sound of bird-life broke the silence, the only living creatures were ants and a bronze-green beetle! (Pterostichus rutilans, Dej.)—not a sign of those alpine forms we had specially come to seek.
From 8500 feet the snow stretched upwards unbroken (save where some sheer escarpment protruded), covering in purest white the vast shoulder of the Veleta. The Picácho itself was to-day hidden amidst swirling clouds, and only once did we enjoy a momentary glimpse of its great scarped outline. Yet in three short weeks, say by May 20, all these leagues of solid snow will have vanished.
Facing this gorge of the Monachil, the opposite slope is crowned by the conspicuous turreted crags known as the Peñones de San Francisco, 8460 feet. To these L. had climbed, and though we both failed in finding the chief of our special objects (the snow-finch) yet L. had enjoyed a glimpse of another alpine species, new to us, and we decided to revisit the spot on the morrow.
That morning again broke fine, the precursor of a glorious day. Hardly had we left our quarters than a lammergeyer soared overhead, then, gently closing his giant wings, plunged into a cavern above. Five minutes later he reappeared and, after several aerial evolutions, suddenly checked and, with indrawn pinions, swept downwards to earth. Ere we could surmount an intervening ridge, the great dragon-like Gypaëtus swept into view, his golden breast gleaming in the early sunlight, and bearing in his talons a long bone with which he sailed across the valley towards Trevenque; we watched to see the result, but, so far as prism-glasses could reach, that bone was never dropped. Probably he had some special spot habitually used for bone-breaking. Later a griffon-vulture (a species rarely seen in Neváda) passed overhead, and then a second lammergeyer sailed up the gorge of Monachil.
