II. An Isolated Crag in Andalucia
Within an easy half-day’s ride from X. lie the cliffs of Chipipi, rising in crenellated tiers from the winding river at their base. It is a lovely May morning. Doves in dozens dash away as we ride through groves of white poplars, and the soft air is filled with their murmurous chorus; the bush-clad banks are vocal with the song of orioles and nightingales, cuckoos, and a score of warblers—Cetti’s and orphean, Sardinian, polyglotta, Bonelli’s. The handsome rufous warbler, though not much of a songster, is everywhere conspicuous, flirting a boldly-barred, fan-shaped tail that catches one’s eye. There are woodchats, serins, hoopoes; azure-blue rollers squawk, and brilliant bee-eaters poise and chatter overhead—their nest-burrows perforate the river-bank like a sand-martins’ colony. On willow-clad eyots nest lesser ring-dotterels and otters bask; while in the shaded depths beneath the fringing osiers lurk barbel intent to dash at belated grasshopper or cricket.
In a thick lentiscos is the nest of a great grey shrike, and while we watch, its owner flies up carrying a lizard in her beak. Half an hour later we see a second shrike, with falcon-like dash, capture another lizard basking in a sunny cranny among the rocks—no mean performance that. There are snakes here also; one we killed, a coluber, on March 31, was 5½ feet long and contained two rabbits swallowed whole and head first—one partly digested. Another snake, quite small, struck us as being something new; him we bottled in spirit and despatched to the British Museum. Presently came the reply, thanking us for a “Lizard, Blanus cinereus.” Lizard? Well, we learnt a lesson. There are limbless lizards, and this was one—the subterranean amphisbaena; our British blindworm (Anguis fragilis) is another, and that also we did not know before. There are curious reptiles here in Spain—the chameleon, for example. The lobe-footed gecko, Salamanquésa in Spanish, haunts sunny rocks where insects abound. But he carries war into the enemy’s camp, invading (not singly, but in force) the wild-bees’ nests. A Spanish bee-keeper gravely assured us that the cold-blooded gecko does this thing expressly to enjoy the sensation of being stung in twenty places at once! Here in a shady glade lie strewn broadcast the wings of butterflies—examine very closely the bush above, and presently an iris-less eye, expressionless as a grey pearl, will meet your own. That is a praying mantis (or Santa Teresa in Spanish), a practical insect but no aesthete, since he devours the ugly body and casts aside the beauteous wings!—see his portrait at p. 87. Among butterflies we counted here the scarce swallowtail, Thaïs polyxena (hatching out on April 3), Vanessa polychloros, a big fritillary with blood-red under-surface to its fore-wings (Argynnis maia, Cramer), Euchloëbelia (March) and the curious insect figured alongside, we know not what it is.[69]
For more than thirty years within our knowledge (and probably for centuries before) these cliffs have formed a home of Bonelli’s eagle. Two huge stick-built nests stand out in visible projection from crevices in the crag, some forty yards apart. To-day (April 3) the occupied eyrie contained a down-clad eaglet, four partridges, and half a rabbit, besides a partridge’s egg, intact, and sundry scraps of flesh, all quite fresh. The nest was lined with green olive-twigs; swarms of carrion-flies buzzed around, and a great tortoiseshell butterfly alit on its edge while we were yet inside. The parent eagles soared overhead, the female carrying a half rabbit, which, in her impatience, she presently commenced to devour, the pair perching on a dead ilex, and affording us this sketch and another inserted at p. 26. Her white breast shone in the sun with a satin-like sheen.
Within sight (though fifteen miles away) is another eyrie of this species—the alternative nests not ten feet apart, merely a projecting buttress of rock separating the two vertical fissures in which they rest. This site is in a rock-stack standing out from the wooded slope of the sierra. The two eggs, slightly blotched with red, were laid in February.
The rough bush-clad hills above our cliff are preserved, and presently meeting the gamekeeper, we tried—(that daily toll of four partridges plus sundry rabbits had got on our consciences!)—to put in a word for our eagle-friends, assuring him they did him service by destroying snakes and big lizards (which they don’t). “Si, señor,” he agreed, adding, “y los insectos!”
Farther along the cliff we found two nests of neophron, each containing two very handsome eggs. This bird makes a comfortable home, the foundation being of sticks, but with a warmly lined central saucer, bedecked with old bones, snakes’ vertebrae, rabbit-skulls, and similar ornaments. The nests were on overhung shelves of the vertical crag, and (like those of the eagles) only accessible by rope. There lay a rat in one—and rather “high.”