But in years of drought—what resource have they, where can they find a substitute for their sun-destroyed and desolate incunabula? Many (the waders in particular) instinctively prognosticate a drought; few, comparatively, either come or remain—those that come pass on. Even such birds as breed on permanent deep-water lakes (such, for example, as the smaller herons, egrets, and ibises) perceive in advance that, although they may have water assured, there will neither be sufficient covert, later on, to conceal their nurseries nor food for the rearing of their young. The erewhiles teeming heronries are abandoned.
Never within forty years has there occurred a drier season than this last, 1909-10. Incidentally we may remark that most of the previous spring-tides that we had expressly devoted to the marisma had been years of excessive rainfall, years when flamingoes nested abundantly—an unfailing index. Such was 1872, for example, 1879, and 1883; again, in April 1891, we remember our gunning-punt, caught in a squall, sinking beneath us in quite three feet of water though barely a mile from shore. These are the seasons when (as described in Wild Spain) one sees the waterfowl in their fullest abundance. On the present occasion (1910) we were to witness converse conditions. Throughout the preceding winter the fountains of heaven had been stayed, nor did the advent of spring bring one hour of rain. By mid-March the marisma was practically waterless—a fortnight later, sunbaked hard as bricks. Where now were the marsh-birds? In April or May you could ride a long day over arid mud-flats and never see a wing, bar, in the latter month, a few Kentish plovers and fluttering pratincoles[67]—add a band or two of croaking sand-grouse (Pterocles alchata) passing in the high heavens. Where had the exiled myriads gone? No man can answer.
We are not so foolish as attempt to say; but we do venture to express the opinion that in years when even wildest Spain refuses asylum to wild creatures such as these, the result to them can only represent an overwhelming catastrophe. For there lies before them no alternative refuge; their races must perish by wholesale.
At those rare points where permanent waters remained one might look for great concentrations of bird-life, yet such was not the case. As indicated, the bulk had foreseen the event and abandoned this country.
One phenomenon struck us as inexplicable. Of the birds that did remain none displayed the slightest symptom of yielding to the vernal impulse, of pairing, or of desiring to nest.
Flamingoes, for example (what few there were), continued massed in solid herds up to mid-May. A band of 300 that we examined closely on the 12th at the Caño de la Junquera (though fully 90 per cent were adults in perfect pink feather) contained not a single paired couple. Hard by the flamingoes some forty or fifty spoonbills were feeding. These, last year, nested at this spot, building upon or among the low samphire-scrub—a dangerously open situation for such big and conspicuous birds. This spring, though many remained in the marisma, not a spoonbill nested in the district at all. Flamingoes, by the way, had exhibited extreme restlessness throughout the spring. On February 22, for example, while steaming up the Straits of Gibraltar, we detected them in quite incredible numbers but at an altitude almost beyond the range even of prism-glasses—it was a dim similitude to drifting cirri that first caught our eye. So vast was their aërial elevation that it was only after prolonged examination we at length recognised those revolving grey specks as being birds at all; presently a nearer band, directly overhead, revealed their characteristic identity. The bulk of these held a southerly tendency, towards Africa; others drifted undecided; while several bands, halting between two opinions, when lost to sight were wheeling beyond the Spanish hills.
Ducks also in mid-May serried the skies in utterly anachronous skeins—reminiscent of winter. These were largely marbled ducks, all unpaired; but there were also very large aggregations of mallards. One such pack on May 10 certainly counted 500—a number we never remember to have seen massed together in Spain before, not even in winter. This was at the Hondon. A similar phenomenon was observed with the white-faced ducks. These curious creatures also remained in packs, and without sign of pairing, on the open waters of Santolalla—open only because aquatic plants had forborne to grow. In normal seasons these lakes are studded with great cane-brakes and islanded reed-jungles, within whose recesses these amphibians build their floating homes. This spring not a reed had grown—partly owing to cattle having destroyed the earlier shoots which are usually protected by deep water. There was literally no covert within which these ducks (and the swarming coots and grebes) could breed, even were they so minded—which they were not!
The only ducks that had paired in earnest were gadwall, garganey, common and white-eyed pochard (of which the first three nest here in very limited numbers), together with normal quantities of mallard.
A collateral result of the shortage of water wrought yet further havoc among the birds which had elected to remain, and accentuated the prescience of those that had departed. Nesting-places, ordinarily islanded in mid-water, were now left stranded on dry land and thus open to the ravages of the whole fraternity of four-footed egg-devouring vermin. Many species, we know, foresee such risks and invariably avoid them; others, less prudent, make the attempt and lose their labour. The white-eyed pochards, for example, which are accustomed to nest in islanded clumps of rush and dense aquatic grasses, this year simply provided free breakfasts to rats and ichneumons! We happened to require two or three settings of these ducks to hatch-off under hens, but no sooner did a marked nest contain three or four eggs than all were devoured! As to the coots, of which both the common and crested species breed in the marisma in myriads, they simply gave it up as a bad business. They did not depart, but resigned themselves to the necessity of skipping a season.