The most favourable time for the assembling of corros is on those days when great heat and calm at midday is succeeded towards evening by an extra strong sea-breeze. On such occasions very large numbers will leave between sundown and dark. Northerly winds will almost absolutely arrest the exodus.
For the season of 1900-1901 our game-books showed a total of 4849 wildfowl (4674 ducks and 175 geese)—a record for which we were good-humouredly taken to task by our venerable friend the late Canon Tristram, who thought it looked excessive. The figures certainly are big, but the next entry in the book reads:—
March 15.—This evening between fifty and seventy corros left within half an hour—say 50,000 to 70,000 ducks. Next morning the marisma appeared as full as ever.
Our toll of 5000 seemed by comparison but as a drop in the bucket!
CHAPTER XXXIX
SPRING-TIME IN THE MARISMAS
BIRD-LIFE IN A DRY SEASON
BIRD-LIFE in the Spanish marisma—in spring no less than in winter—presents spectacles of such abounding variety as can nowhere in Europe be surpassed. In the Arctic are vaster aggregations, but these, comprising, say, only half-a-dozen species, are less attractive. It is the infinite kaleidoscopic succession of graceful and dissimilar forms that hour by hour flash on one’s sight—in a word, it is variety that lends abiding charm to our Spanish bird-world.
These scenes have already been described—we have ourselves described them in detail, and do not propose to recapitulate, alluring though the subject be.
Here we purpose depicting bird-life under undescribed conditions—in a spring when, by reason of exceptional drought, the myriad marsh-dwellers find themselves entirely at fault. Winging their seasonal way from Africa, to seek the seclusion of reed-girt pools and their accustomed league-long swamps and shallows, they found instead a calcined plain, no drop of water remaining, plant-life either prematurely parched or pulverised beneath a fiery sun. Watching the arrival of the advance-guard in early spring, one wondered what the bewildered hosts would do next, how they would face this fresh freak of nature.
The marismas, it should be explained, normally dry every summer, however wet the previous winter may have been. Though the great lucios stood five feet deep in February, yet the deepest will be stone-dry by midsummer or, at latest, by St. Jago (July 24). Cattle and the wild-game can then only drink at the narrowed pools where permanent water, however exiguous, oozes forth—or the cattle from wells. In normal years, however, the marsh-birds have already reared their broods before these dates.