Andalucia possesses a feathered census that approaches 400 species; but of these hardly a score are permanently resident throughout the year.
Four-footed creatures are less difficult of diagnosis than are birds. By nature less mobile, they are infinitely less numerous specifically. Relatively the Spanish census is long, and includes, locally, quite a number of interesting beasts that are “lumped together” as Alimañas—to wit, lynxes, wild-cats, genets, mongoose, foxes, otters, badgers, of which we treat separately. The two chief game-animals of the Coto Doñana are the red deer and the wild-boar. These two we here examine from the sportsman’s point of view as much as from that of the naturalist.
The Spanish red deer are specifically identical with those of Scotland and the rest of Europe, and are distributed over the whole southern half of the Iberian Peninsula—say south of a line drawn through Madrid. Their haunts, as a rule, are restricted to the mountain-ranges—especially the Sierra Moréna, where they attain their highest development. That red deer should be found inhabiting lowlands such as the Coto Doñana is wholly exceptional. In Estremadura, it is true, there are wild regions (in Badajoz and Cáceres) where deer are spread far and wide over wooded and scrub-clad plains, all these, however, being subjacent to neighbouring sierras, which refuges are available for retreat in case of need. Nowhere else in Spain, save here in the Coto Doñana only, are red deer restricted exclusively to lowlands.
This South-Spanish race (the southernmost of all if we except the distinct but limited breed that yet maintains a foothold in North Africa, the Barbary stag, which is white-spotted) differs from Scotch types in their longer faces and slim necks unadorned with the hairy “ruff” of harsher climes. Beyond a doubt, when our species-splitting friends arrive in Spain, they will differentiate her red deer (and ibex also) in various species or subspecies, each with a Latin trinomial. Such energies, however, may easily be superfluous, even where not actually mischievous. For practical purposes there exists but one European species, though it has, even within Spain, its local varieties; while, further afield, geographical and climatic divergencies naturally tend to increase.[7]
We cannot claim for our lowland deer of Doñana a high standard of comparative quality; they are, in fact, the smallest race in Spain, almost puny as compared with her mountain breed—smaller also than the Barbary stag. Clean weights here rarely exceed 200 lbs., while a 30-in. head must be accounted beyond the average. The general type, both of horn and body, is illustrated by various photos and drawings in this book.
Deer-shooting in Spain takes place in the winter. The rutting season commences at the end of August, terminating early in October, and stags have recovered condition by the end of November.
The habits of red deer being, here as elsewhere, strictly nocturnal, and the country densely clad with bush, it follows that these animals are seldom seen amove during daylight. Hence deer-stalking, properly so called, is not available, nor is the method much esteemed in Spain. In Scotland one may detect deer, though it be but a tip of an antler, when couched in the tallest heather or fern. Here, where heather grows six or eight feet in height with a bewildering jumble of other shrubbery of like proportions, no such view is possible. Hence “driving” is in Spain the usual method of deer-shooting, whether in mountain or lowland.
