Another ten minutes’ suspense. Then a crash of hound-music proclaimed that the quarry was at home. This boar proved to be one of certain grizzly monsters of which we were specially in search, his lair a jumble of boulders islanded amid thickest jungle. Here he held his ground, declining to recognise in canine aggressors a superior force. Two boar-hounds reinforced the skirmishers of the pack, yet the old tusker stood firm. For minutes that seemed like hours the conflict raged stationary: the sonorous baying of the boar-hounds, the “yapping” of the smaller dogs, and shouts of mountaineers blended with the howl of an incautious podenco as he received a death-rip—all formed a chorus of sounds that carried their exciting story to the sentinel guns above.
The seat of war being near half-a-mile away, no immediate issue was expected. Then there occurred one crash of bush, and a second boar dashed straight for the pass where the writer barred the way. The suddenness of the encounter disconcerted, and the first shot missed—the bullet splashing on a grey rock just above—time barely remained to jump aside and avoid collision. The left barrel got home: a stumble and a savage grunt as an ounce of lead penetrated his vitals, and the boar plunged headlong, his life-blood dyeing the weather-blanched rocks and green palmetto. For a moment he lay, but ere cold steel could administer a quietus, he had regained his feet and dashed back. Whether revenge prompted that move or it was merely an effort to regain the covert he had just left, we know not—a third bullet laid him lifeless.
During this interlude (though it only occupied five seconds) the main combat below reached its climax. The old boar had left his stronghold, and after sundry sullen stands and promiscuous skirmishes (during which a second podenco died), he made for the heights. Showing first on the centre, he was covered for a moment by a ·450 Express; but, not breaking covert, no shot could be fired, and when next viewed the boar was trotting up a stone-slide on the extreme left. Here a rifle-shot broke a foreleg, and the disabled beast, unable to face the hill, retreated to the thicket below, scattering dogs and beaters in headlong flight. And now commenced the hue and cry—the real hard work for those who meant to see the end and earn the spoils of war. Presently Moro’s deep voice told us of the boar at bay, far away down in the depths of the defile. What followed in that hurly-burly—that mad scramble through brake and thicket, down crag and scree—cannot be written. Each man only knows what he did himself, or did not do. We can answer for three. One of these seated himself on a rock and lit a cigarette. The others, ten minutes later, arrived on the final scene, one minus his nether garments and sundry patches of skin, but in time to take part in the death of as grand a boar as roams the Spanish sierras.
This last spring (1910), after thirty-eight years, we revisited the Boca de la Foz, partly to reassure ourselves that the above description was not overdrawn. No! ‘Tis a terrible wild gorge, the Foz, but the days when we can follow a wounded boar through obstacles such as those have passed away. The boars, we were told, are still there, and so are the vultures in those magnificent crags. We climbed along the ledges and there were the great stick-built nests, each in its ancestral site. In March each contains a single egg; now (April) that is replaced by a leaden-hued chick. These cliffs are also tenanted by ravens and a single pair of choughs. Neophrons occupied the same cavern whence I shot a female in 1872, and crag-martins held their old abodes, plastered on to the roofs of the caves.
As April advances a new and striking bird-form arrives to adorn the higher sierras—the least observant can scarce miss this, the rock-thrush (Monticola saxatilis), conspicuous alike in plumage and actions; with clear blue head and chestnut breast, its colour-scheme includes a broad patch of white set in the centre of a dark back. The contrast is most effective, and, so far as we know, this “fashion” of a white back is unique among birds, unless indeed it be shared by Bonelli’s eagle. The rock-thrush is also endowed with a lovely wild song, quite low and simple, but replete with a fine “high-tops” quality. By April 20 he yields to vernal impulses, and his courting is pretty to see; wheeling around on transparent pinions, he soars and sings the livelong day; at intervals, with collapsed wing, he drops like a stone to join his sober-hued mate among the rocks; a few picturesque poses, displaying all those flashing tints of orange and opal, and off he goes again to soar and sing once more. His cousin, the blue-thrush, has also a sweet song and a similar hovering flight, ending in a “drop act”; but the ascent is more vertical, while frequently he varies the descent and comes fluttering down in tree-pipit or butterfly-like style. Even the sober little blackchat now “shows off,” perched on some boulder with quivering wings and tail spread fan-like over his back. Both these two last, being resident, nest much earlier than the migratory rock-thrush: the latter was building (in crevices of the rocks) by mid-April, but hardly lays before May.
These sierras being only 3000 to 4000 feet, one misses here some of the alpine forms observed at higher altitudes. The tawny pipit, for example, a sandy-hued bird with dark eye-stripe and active wagtail-like gait, which was common on San Cristobal at 4500 feet in April, never showed up here at all; nor did any of the following species, all so characteristic of the higher ground: Blackstarts, woodlarks, rock-buntings, cole-and longtail-tits, and tree-creepers. The choughs, spotted woodpeckers, rock-thrushes, crag-martins, and wood-pigeons, though observed, were here very much scarcer. The lammergeyer, too, rarely descends here, and then only while in his smoke-black uniform of immaturity.
The Puerta de Palomas
In May 1883, while returning from Ubrique, our horses fell lame owing to loss of shoes, and for four days and nights we were encamped in the pass known as the Puerta de Palomas. There is a tiny ventorillo, or wayside wine-shop, at the foot of the pass; but nights are warm in May, and we preferred the freedom of the open hill, where the strange growls made by the griffons at dawn, together with the awakening carol of the rock-thrush, formed our reveille each morning in that roofless bedroom amidst the boulders.
The opposite side of the pass is dominated by the picturesque pile called the Picacho del Aljibe, a conical peak that towers in tiers of crags above the adjoining sierras not unlike a gigantic Arthur’s Seat over the Salisbury Crags. Our own side was rather a chaotic jumble of detached monoliths than cliffs proper, and by clambering over these we reached in one morning sixteen vultures’ nests, the easiest of access we ever struck. They were mostly very slight affairs, bare rock often protruding through the scanty structure; though, where necessary, a broad platform of sticks was provided—as sketched. The poults (only one in each nest) were now as big as guinea-fowls, with brown feathers sprouting through the white down. These eyries, albeit slightly malodorous, are always strictly clean, since vultures feed their young by disgorging half-digested food from their own crops, and we watched this not-pleasing operation being performed within some eighty yards’ distance; hence there is no carrion or putrefying matter lying about, as is the case with the neophron and lammergeyer.
